Guardians
by Princess-Xion
Summary: -suspended- I'm conceited, okay? Full of myself, think I'm the hot shit, catch my drift? So I met this chick, right? Smoking hot, Irish, and eyes the color of the sky. Well, don't get your jockey shorts in a vise . .. Things are never simple with hot chicks. [Drugs, violence, blood, sexual content] Rated M. Sokai.
1. Teachers Are Not Just Teachers

_Why can't you see, that I fear for the worst__  
__This is what I gave, I'm on your side_

* * *

Teachers are not just teachers. They are guardians. Angels with the wings of education and the swords of literature. They are not only called to teach, but they are called to defend. To protect. Without that, all you have is a faceless, mindless human being standing in front of a classroom speaking nonsense and feeding into society's mainstream expectations. Without that, all you have is nothing.

I graduated high school at the age of 16. To say I was a miniature genius was an understatement. My exact I.Q. is irrelevant—all you need to know is that I'm intellectual, quick on my feet, and I'm socially inept. Yes, you read that right. I'm completely and utterly socially retarded (Pardon my use of the word), though I rather like to say I _choose_ solitude.

Damn. Okay, you got me. It's more like solitude was thrust upon me from a young age. I mean, come the fuck on—I was playing full compositions on the viola at the age of 8 and after I gave music up and moved on to Mathematics, I knew how to "plot the Y intersect" or whatever by the end of sixth grade. Kids at that age don't exactly know how to play on the playground with a miniature Stephen Hawking. I eventually found a deep love of English and Literature and by the time I entered the community college Running Start program at 14, I was dead set on becoming an English teacher.

I graduated college three months ago with Honors, and now I'm about to start working at my old high school. I'm going to be a student teacher for the twelfth grade and I'm only 20 years old. How fucked is that? I still dress like the kids who shop at Hot Topic and PacSun. Not like a goth, mind you (That phase came about when I was 13. I'll pass.), but I like a good pair of skinny jeans when I see them. I wasn't exactly _nervous_ to be teaching kids who were practically in my age group, but I can't say I was all that enthusiastic. I mean, you don't exactly get to _choose _what grade you student teach for. Not in _this _economy, anyway.

Oh, and don't make the mistake of thinking this little tale is in present tense. No, it's definitely in past tense. Sometimes I just get a little carried away. Photographic memory doesn't exactly allow you to forget things, know what I mean? In any case, I digress . . . Bottom line is, this is a story. A story I'm telling you that, despite what you may think, has a little more interesting plotline than my education and how early I graduated college. A story that unfortunately has a much darker plotline and sequence of events. I don't know how easy it will be for me to tell it to you, but . . . I'll do my best.

Just because I have a mind that can capture every single thing I go through like a camera taking a photograph, doesn't mean I have to like the photos it takes.

So buckle up, kids. It's gonna be a bumpy ride (Fuck, I may be a genius, but I am _so _cliché).

~x~

So since I'm studying to become a full-fledged English teacher, I suppose we should start the story at the beginning, with how we met. Oh, that's right . . . You don't know what I mean by "we," do you? You will soon.

My first day working was on September 4th, 2015. I started my first day by walking up the front steps with my longboard under my arm and faceplanting it on the concrete landing right at the top. There were students _everywhere_ and I could hear their laughter ringing louder than the school bell in my ears. I ignored them, though. After all, I was a genius. I saw past the laughter and into the vicious social hierarchy that was a high school campus—cliques based upon how much money you had or how nice your clothes were. I was here to be a student teacher, not to impress the Queen Bee or the King Dragon. I'm sure me riding a longboard there instead of driving a car kind-of made me blend in with the students, but still. I just picked myself up off of the steps, pushed through the crowd, and went into the building.

The office was to the right when I first walked in, so I went inside. The extravagant appearance of it didn't really faze me, even though the school building was newly-remodeled with the millions of dollars the rich members of town had pumped into it the previous year. I walked up to the Secretary, who merely glared at me disdainfully down her nose.

"No skateboards in the school building," she said sternly.

I merely stared at her. "Where's the Boss? I start work today."

Her expression remained scornful. "Excuse me?"

"Where. Is. The. Boss?" I said slowly. "I. Start. Work. Today."

Her mouth opened but she looked like she had no idea what to say to me. I didn't blink. I was used to people reacting oddly to the way I talked. I was insanely smart and had a ridiculously high I.Q. but that didn't mean that there was some unspoken law that said I had to speak like an eighteenth century poet, for fuck's sake. To be honest, it relaxed me to dumb down the way I spoke. To be constantly thinking on a completely different level than everyone around sometimes made me feel like an outsider.

"Ah, Mr. Richardson!" The Principal came out of his office, completely prim and proper in a dark blue suit and striped red-and-navy tie. He had silver hair cropped around his head with long bangs that swept down to his chin. He removed his rectangular glasses from the end of his nose and widened his smile. "My resident genius. Come into my office. Thank you, Aerith. Oh, and Aerith, could you please remember to file those reports in alphabetical order from _A _to _Z _this year, not _Z _to _A_? Thank you, my dear."

I smirked at the secretary, unable to resist with my ridiculously arrogant personality, and followed him into his lavishly decorated office. He gestured to the overly-cushioned seat that rested in front of his desk and then took a seat on the opposite side of it.

"I must say, I'm thoroughly ecstatic to have you on the faculty this year, Mr. Richardson," he gushed, his smile bright and wide. "My name is Zexion Marada, but everyone is required to call me Principal Zexion during school hours. I like things to remain professional."

I plopped down in the seat, slouching down and setting my longboard across my lap. Professional? I was wearing black combat boots, black skinny jeans, and a red-and-black plaid button up with the sleeves rolled up to my elbows. Not exactly "business attire."

"Yes, I do see what you're wearing," Zexion chuckled as though he were reading my thoughts. "But honestly, with your credentials, you can wear what you please. Destiny Hearts High School is just fortunate to have someone like you on board."

"You spoil me," I drawled, my lips still curved into a smirk.

"I should hope you feel spoiled," Zexion said, clasping his hands on his desk and continuing to regard me warmly. "You are not only the only student teacher we've ever allowed at Destiny Hearts, but you're the only student teacher I've ever fought like Hell to get."

My cobalt blue eyes looked at him through my chin-length chestnut-brown bangs. That came as a surprise to me because at the time, I had no idea anyone was really aware of just how intelligent I was.

"Now," Zexion said, gesturing to a packet of papers on his desktop. "Shall we begin the paperwork?"

So at this point in the story, I'm just going to skip all of the boring details. Like I said, this isn't a tale of my education or life. I mean, it's about my life, but it's also about someone else's life.

Hers.

After doing all of the paperwork, the tour, meeting a lot of the staff, and getting my lanyard with my name card on it, Zexion took me directly to the class I was going to be teaching. My master teacher was a tall, burly man with dark brown hair slicked back along his head named Terra. He was one of those teachers who insisted on everyone calling him by his first name and who taught the class without his shoes on, so I knew we were going to get along pretty well. Introductions were made, and then Zexion departed us.

"Class, this is the student teacher you're going to have this year," he said, taking my longboard from me and slipping it into a closet behind his teacher's desk. "He's just graduated college and he's here to do a lot of learning, just like you. He's definitely not as cool as me, but he dresses better than me, so that's something."

Cue the awkward smattering of laughter that was guaranteed to follow. High school was exactly like the books and movies, in spite of what people might tell you. If the teacher makes a joke, no matter how mirthless it is, the students _will _laugh.

I stared out at all the students, my hands slipped into the pockets of my jeans, but they were just a sea of faces with different colored hair. People were always like that to me. Endless blurs. The only things that stood out clear as day to me were words. English. Literature. It was the only thing I could trust. It was the only thing I drew comfort in.

"I'm Sora," I announced in the calming grate that was my voice. I said nothing else.

Terra crossed his arms, chuckling incredulously. "That's it? You're a prodigy around town, went to Harvard, and all you can say is your name?"

I stared at him blankly. "I'm Sora? I like cats?"

Everyone laughed, only this time it didn't sound as awkward. Some kid at the front with blonde spiky hair that pushed up against the right side of his head was grinning like a madman at a kid next to him that was obviously his twin brother.

"I like cats, too. If you catch my drift."

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. Teenage immaturity. I can't recall ever going through that phase, to be honest.

"All right, settle down," Terra said, rolling his eyes. "Sora, you can have a seat at my desk for now—we'll get you your own desk sometime later this week. Meanwhile, class, can you get your—"

The classroom door crashed open and a flutter of papers came flying through the open door. A loud screech issued forth from within the flurry and someone scrambled around on their hands and knees to pick the papers and books up. My eyes lit up with muted amusement as I watched whom I predicted to be the class' obvious resident klutz that year perform their "klutz-ly" duties.

. . . What? Because I'm a genius, I'm not allowed to make up stupid words? Sue me!

Cue inspirational, romantic Taylor Swift shitty music now.

This is the point in the story where you know, girl meets boy's eyes and their hearts stop, boy hurries to help her pick up her things and thinks she's the hottest girl he's ever seen. Except for in this story, I was too old for her and even though I thought she was pretty, I wasn't the only one who got up to help her pick her stuff up. To say that "all the male students went to help her" would definitely be an understatement.

I had barely budged an inch before every boy in the class swooped in like hawks. I couldn't stop myself from smiling. Human males were like giant gorillas. I could just imagine them grunting and groaning, nudging each other and fighting over a measly female. I didn't really have to imagine much, though because in the next few seconds, the twins were fighting with each other over who got to pick up her binder.

Terra calmed everyone down, sent the twins to the office, and finished helping the girl pick her stuff up. I glanced at the students briefly, noting that the other girls in the classroom looked none-too-happy at this incident, and then I strode briskly over to the doorway. I held out a hand to the girl.

Her crimson-red hair fell back over her shoulders and her cerulean eyes sparkled up at me innocently. She was small, much shorter than my six-foot tall self, and when I took her hand to help her to her feet, I realized she couldn't weigh much more than 110 pounds. She was dressed in a pair of high-waisted ripped jean shorts with daisies on the front pockets and a light pink crop top with a corset lacing detail on the front. I was surprised dress code allowed her to wear something so revealing, but then again, we lived in Southern California.

"Thanks," she said, flashing me a smile of pearly white teeth. She had an accent. An Irish one.

I just stared at her stomach. There was a bruise on her hip the color of a murky puddle of water full of mud. I wasn't exactly the most discreet person (socially inept, remember?).

"You can . . . Let go of my hand now," she said slowly, giggling a little bit. I heard students snickering in their seats.

I kept staring at her stomach. There was a bruise on her hip. Why the Hell couldn't I look away?

"Uh . . . You can . . . You can let go?" she repeated awkwardly, her smile faltering a bit.

I remember feeling a bit sick at the time. I didn't know the girl Adam from Eve, but I knew that the bruise didn't belong there. Something didn't feel right, and I just couldn't shake the weird feeling of intuition that I was having.

Terra cleared his throat behind us and said loudly, "You're Kairi, right? The exchange student from Ireland?"

"Yes," she said, gingerly extracting her hand from mine. Her gaze lingered upon my heart-shaped face for a moment, and then she brushed her bangs out of her eyes and accepted the binder and papers that another male student handed her. "Do I just . . . Find a seat anywhere?"

"Yeah," Terra said, crossing her name off of a clipboard. "Sora, you can take your seat as well. After all that craziness, let's just get this class started, shall we?"

I watched the girl—Kairi, I guess her name was—walk to a seat at the back of the class, and then I went and sat behind Terra's desk once more. I didn't look at her again for the rest of the class, but I just couldn't shake the image of the bruise on her bony hip from my mind's eyes for the rest of the day.

At the end of that class period, though, I watched her walk out and she glanced at me over her shoulder once. I could see her long, thick black eyelashes fluttering from across the room. I twined my fingers together behind my head, leaning back in Terra's desk chair. Terra was prattling on and on about something or another (I soon learned that he was one of those chatterbox teachers), his voice echoing faintly in my ear and all I could do was look at this girl. I had lived my life moving through the blurry, endless sea of people with normal brains that didn't dissect everything with facts and numbers, and yet this ordinary redheaded Irish girl stood out to me like a droplet of blood in a bed of snow.

There was another bruise on her lower back.

I told you it was going to be a bumpy ride.

_Ten thousand feet in the air__  
__And as we're falling faster, the thought of you begins_

~x~

**Song: **_**"Ten Thousand Feet" by I See Stars**_

**Author's Note: This is my newest story. I know I haven't written or updated my other stories in a long, long time but I just haven't found the inspiration to in awhile. I promise I will soon, though. Hopefully working on this story will get my juices flowing. I apologize to my readers of my other fics who are waiting, but I just need some time. Also, I've just started making Kingdom Hearts AMVs on Youtube, so please go to my profile to find the link, check them out, and see if you like them! Thank you!**

**This story is going to be very dark, which is something I know you guys have come to expect from me, but the point of view and the style of writing is a bit different for me. I wanted to try writing from the perspective of someone who wasn't depressed and Emo, but I still wanted dark themes in the story because that's my strong suit. I hope you guys will stick with me on this story. Please review and tell me what you think!**

**Question of the chapter: How do my previous readers like this character I've created for Sora this time around? Do you like him when he's stoic and brooding, or do you like him when he's arrogant and sarcastic? Let me know!**


	2. Fly

_How easy it is to detest you.__  
__You hold your head so high.__  
__Higher than the world you think you own,__  
__but I know you're alone._

* * *

In every story, there's usually a sequence of events that usually unfolds at a certain pace over the course of a specific amount of time. You know, all that "story elements" shit you learn in school: Introduction, rising action, climax, falling action, finale. Well, in the case of this story, you can disregard all of it because after I met Kairi, my life skipped all introductions and rising actions and went straight to the climax.

Kairi arrived late to class every single day. Some days she spilled all of her things everywhere, some days she just tripped a little bit in her haste to get to her seat. Rarely did she ever make it to her desk without at least a slight stumbling motion. At first, all the girls hated her and all the guys liked her, but by the time Homecoming rolled around in October, I noticed that something changed. It was like a ripple when you skip a smooth stone across the surface of a body of water. One or a few heads stopped turning when she showed up; the twins—named Roxas and Ventus, I had discovered—didn't crack inappropriate jokes anymore. There were a few other small things, but none as glaringly obvious as the bruises.

Those God damn bruises. I don't even know why the Hell I was so interested in them. It was like they were dipped in unicorn shit and splashed with flecks of diamond.

All right, that was disgusting. I'm totally kidding. But they were pretty interesting.

One particular day that stands out in my mind was probably, oh I don't know, maybe mid-October? Terra had me grading essays (which is not as fun as you'd think, _trust_ me) at the desk Principal Zexion had gotten for me at the back of his room. It was a half-hour into the class period and I was pretty aware of the fact that Kairi wasn't yet at class, but I was trying _not _to be so interest, you know? Technically it was illegal and completely taboo for a teacher to take interest in a student, right? Kairi may have been in the twelfth grade, but that didn't mean she was 18 yet.

Oh, fuck, that sounds so wrong, I know. But even to this day, I still don't know why I was so attracted to her, so interested in what she was doing. She was definitely pretty, with teeth as white as the Artic tundra, eyes so blue they pierced through you, a killer body, and vibrant red hair that fell to mid-back . . . But I had seen and been with plenty of pretty girls in my years (what? I was socially awkward, but I wasn't lacking in the girl department. Like, at _all_). What was so special about this one?

To be honest, I don't think _any _guy knows why he picks the girls he does.

Anyway, back to what was going on that day. So I was grading the essays, right? And I was having a hard time deciphering this kid's handwriting when all-of-a-sudden, our resident klutz comes barreling into the room. Today was a "trip _and _fall" kind-of day, so as you can probably imagine, it wasn't just papers that went spilling to the floor.

Nobody got up to help her this time but me.

I took my sweet ass time returning her papers to her and when our eyes met, I not only felt my heart stop (she was like, _really _pretty, okay? Sheesh, give me a fucking break), but I felt my blood turn to icy.

The bottom of her left cheek and all along her jawline on the same side were a dark reddish-brown hue, the rosy parts of her cheek seeming puffy and swollen. It was clear to anyone with a pair of eyes that someone had decked her across the face. A cat fight? A boyfriend with a temper? Perhaps a run-in with a nasty pole on the sidewalk? I didn't know. All I knew was that even though I had never had a real conversation with her . . .

I wanted to hurt whoever had hurt her.

"Thanks," she whispered, hurrying past me to her seat. I stood there uncomfortably for a moment, rubbing my hand against the back of my neck. The student closest to where I was standing—one of the twins—gave me a knowing look. I just rolled my eyes at him and went back to my desk.

Why the Hell was this girl always so beat up?

~x~

It wouldn't be an angsty teenage drama without some angtsy teenage angst, so let me tell you a little bit about my family.

We didn't speak.

Well, we did. If you called arguing constantly about my life, then yes, we spoke.

My mother was 42 years old and was a police officer at the local police station. She was probably one of the most emotional, invested cops in the whole squad, and she was completely and utterly devoted to her job and her family. You might think this is a good thing for a mom, to have a good balance, but it wasn't. Trust me. If my mom wasn't talking to me about work, she was asking me questions about my career incessantly. It was beyond frustrating.

My father was no better. He was 45 and absolutely _hated _the fact that I didn't end up playing football. Literally, I would _not _be surprised if the guy had a shrine to me in his closet. A shrine with like, a football with a funeral wreath around it. And candles and shit. That he probably worships in the hopes that time will rewind and he can turn me into a short-haired jock with a steroid-induced temper problem. Fuck.

As you can imagine, I only heard from him on the holidays.

My mother called me on my fourth day of work to ask me how things were going. She sounded chipper and interested in what I was up to, as she usually did when it came to my career.

"So how are you liking your new school, honey?" she asked brightly.

"Sunshine and rainbows, Mother dear," I said in an over-exaggeratedly happy voice. I was sitting in my car (which I had been forced to drive to the school that day since my damn longboard broke in half the previous day on the railing outside my apartment complex. New ones were like, a shit ton of money. So you can guess how pissed off I was.) and had been staring out the window, contemplating my life. Contemplating my life . . . And thinking about how much I hated high schoolers.

"Don't be that way," she chided gently. "Just tell me how you like your new job. I know you want to teach junior high, but high school can't be that bad, can it?"

"Oh, yeah," I said sarcastically. "Teaching kids while looking like a kid is just fucking dandy."

"Can you _please_ stop acting like that?" she said, sounding exasperated. "I just want to know how you're doing. You never call me anymore."

"Because I never have anything to say," I muttered, just loud enough for her to hear it. I pulled down my viser and looked at myself in the mirror for a moment. My chestnut brown hair spiked up all over my head in every direction; my chin-length bangs fell across my face and into my eyes. I brushed them out of the way. I really did look like a high schooler.

"Well, now you should have lots to tell me." She sounds happy-go-lucky again. "Now come on, tell me how you like being a student teacher."

I sighed heavily. I hated talking to my mother. Even just hearing her voice sometimes made me want to cringe. I already knew my dad was disappointed in me, but I just couldn't trust that my mom wasn't disappointed in me to. I didn't like disappointing people.

"It's . . . It's just whatever," I said, annoyed. "I don't really do anything. I just grade papers and babysit when my master teacher has to leave the room."

"Grade papers? You don't get to help with the lessons and stuff?" she asked, sounding confused.

"What the Hell do you think being a student teacher is? It's just a fancy title for something much less glamorous—I'm basically just a glorified teacher's aide." I placed my fingers on the driver's side window and drew invisible designs on it. I'm pretty sure everyone does that when they're on the phone in a parked car.

"Oh, stop," she tsked. "You are _not_. Student teachers are much more important. And anyway, don't you have like, tests and stuff every so often to make sure you're on the right track?"

"No," I laughed. "I have my Bachelor's Degree, Mother. I don't need to be tested. I'm just required to have at least one year of student teaching before I can get a job as a full-fledged teacher."

"Oh, I see," she said and there was a long pause. At that point in time, I knew what was coming, but I didn't know how to stop it. So I just let it happen, like I always did.

My mother cleared her throat. "Have you . . . Have you been to see a therapist yet?"

I said nothing, gritting my teeth. I _hated_ that. She _always _asked me if I was seeing a therapist. _Always_. She was so nosy. It pissed me the fuck off.

"No, I haven't," I snarled, about ready to hang up. "And I'm not going to."

"Sora, honey, it's been two years," she said softly. "I think you really need to see a therapist. You need to find a way to work through your grief."

"I don't need a fucking doctor," I growled. "I don't need to be sitting there, telling my gay-ass problems to some old bat who doesn't even _know_ me. I'm not sick. I don't need a doctor."

My mother was quiet and then, in a lowered voice, she asked, "Are you still taking it?"

"Taking what?" Anxiously, I rubbed the back of my neck.

"The pain pills, Sora," she said knowingly. "Have you been taking them still?"

"No," I lied. My eyes slid to the glove compartment, where I knew there was a small bottle of the very pills she was speaking of. I hated talking to my mother, but I hated lying to her even more. She may have been nosy, but she didn't deserve me lying to her. Not after everything we'd been through.

Shit. I wanted to take them right then.

"Sora, don't lie to me," she snapped. "I know you're still taking them. You _need_ to see a _doctor_."

"I'm fine, Mother," I grated out, setting my jaw and balling my free hand into a fist in my lap.

You're probably wondering what the Hell my mother was talking about, and what the fuck I was so choked up and anxious about. Well, you'll know soon enough, won't you? For now, all you need to know is that there was a bottle of Oxycodone in my car, and right at that moment, I wanted to take every single last one.

"You're not fine, Sora," my mother cried. I heard her voice cracking with emotion. "You're my son, and you're not fine. I know who you were before the accident. Before . . . Before he died . . . You were my son. And now you're not."

I saw red. Bright, flashing lights of red that screamed at my entire being. I felt like I was spinning out of control, tumbling through a space that was white-hot and blinding. I just wanted it all to stop. It hurt. It hurt so badly.

"Shut up!" I shouted into the phone. "Just shut the fuck up! You don't know anything!" I hung up before I could hear another word coming out of her mouth, before I could hurt her any more than I already had.

It was at that point that I broke down, angry tears glittering in my eyes as I raged from within. I threw my cell phone away from me, hearing it clatter against the windshield and tumble to the floor. My body shook with the force of my sobs as the pain that consumed the depths of my heart took over. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted it all to stop.

I reached over and opened the glove compartment. The school day was over. I was supposed to be on my way home. The school day was over, and I wanted to fly. I took the bottle out of the compartment, hearing the pills rattling satisfactorily in the little orange plastic cylinder. I opened the lid.

And then I flew.

_But still I see you screaming at the sky.__  
__You're just another sinner when you keep the truth subliminal. __  
__Forgetting everything that you took from him.__  
__You profit from manipulation, living like a criminal._

~x~

**Song: "**_**Same Graves" by Storm the Sky**_

**Author's Note: Sorry that took me so long to write. It was kinda like pulling teeth. As you guys probably are aware, I HATE the boring stuff. I like the romance and the drama. But I need to work on my character development and my plotlines, so I had to do it. Anyway, I hope you guys still like the way Sora's character is in this fic. Go ahead and review and let me know what you think!**

**Thank you to everyone who reviewed, favorite, and followed! You guys are all pretty darn great! Also, thank you to my faithful readers who have been so understanding of the fact that I haven't updated/completed my other stories. You guys are so wonderful1 I will try to gain inspiration for those fics as soon as I can so I can finish them. Please continue to support my work~**


	3. Perseverance in Earnest

_Say anything, say anything,_

_Say anything that can make this all okay._

_Take it away, take it away,_

_Take away all of this emptiness I feel_

'_Cause I will never find another you._

* * *

My cousin's birthday is the day before Halloween. Cool, huh? Nah, I don't really care, but a birthday is a birthday. Birthdays mean free cake, and I'm all about free food. You might think that's "selfish" of me, but when your IQ is ridiculously high, you kinda already live a pretty lonely and "selfish" life, you know?

Back to what I was saying, though. So my cousin's birthday is the day before Halloween, right? Yeah. And my cousin is like, the only person I have in my life that could even be considered _close_ to a friend for me. We don't really hang out often, but sometimes he invites me to parties and whatnot. This year was no different. He was having a party at some new bar or strip club or something downtown and he wanted me to show up and have a good time. I wasn't very fond of places like that, but I wasn't going to turn down a drink. I was so tall that I never got carded, so I wouldn't have to worry about anything.

When I got home from school that day, I was totally exhausted. The twins—Roxas and Ventus—were literally the bane of my existence. They were those asshole kids in every class you have in high school; the ones who think their jokes are hilarious and that they're so hot they can say whatever they want to a girl and she'll just drop her pants right there. Today, Terra had left me in charge of disciplining students whenever one of them talked without raising their hand or something, so I was fuming by the end of the period the twins were in. As a result, I didn't really _want_ to go anywhere, but since my cousin was the only family I had that I didn't argue with, I knew it would piss him off if I didn't show.

I slowly trudged up the stairs to my apartment door, cycling through all the keys on my key ring to find my home key. As I did, I found myself thinking of the girl from Terra's first period class: Kairi. The Irish girl with the pretty, sad blue eyes and the ugly, purpling bruises. I saw her everyday but she never really looked at me. She was a bit of a social butterfly with the boys in the class, flirtatiously batting her eyelashes and asking for help on every single bit of work Terra assigned them. I wondered if she knew how she came off to other people, but at the same time, I wondered if she knew but she just didn't care. If the latter were the case, then

I think I would definitely admire that. I liked people who went against the flow; people who had no desire to conform to society's idealistic views on how girls or boys should act.

People like me.

I went inside, setting my keys on the counter and leaning down to pet my cat, Shadow. She was a fat Persian with the most adorable flat face and . . . I think I mentioned that I liked cats, right? Right. The name wasn't the most creative, but I mean, I wasn't really about creativity. I was about logic. The cat was black. Logically, its name should be Shadow. Duh.

In my room, I took off my clothes and grabbed a pair of black skinny jeans from the floor. I looked at myself in the mirror on my wall, playing with the spikes of my hair a bit. Whenever I looked at my reflection, I didn't really feel anything. I was arrogant about my mind, not my looks. I didn't really have a _low_ self-esteem, per se . . . I just felt kind-of neutral.

All the pills I was taking pretty much eradicated any inkling of care I had about my looks.

I grabbed a white V-neck out of my laundry basket and threw it on. I was just going to a strip club. I didn't really care if what I was wearing wasn't exactly clean. I slipped on some combat boots that I got from Forever21 like a year ago and headed back out the door. Shadow meowed a goodbye, and then I locked the door behind me. Heaving a sigh, I was ready for the evening.

My cell phone rang and I answered it when I saw my cousin's name.

"What?" I drawled as I walked down the stone steps.

"Yo, dude, change of plans," my cousin said. I could hear laughter and voices in the background. Probably his friends. I hated his friends. Bunch of jocky, douchey assholes that were more interested in the brotherhood of their frat houses than in anything of substance.

"What?" I repeated in the same irritated inflection.

"There's a new bar like, a block away from the strip club, and everyone says it's the shit," he said. "We're driving over there right now. We're gonna eat at the Applebee's next door to it first, though, so come meet us there."

"Mm," was all I said.

"Kay, see ya!" He hung up.

Annoyed, I shook my head. I liked schedules. I liked plans. When plans changed, it bothered me. I was an introverted agoraphobic asshole, and if I had to leave the house, I liked to know what I was leaving it for. Whe the plans changed, it made me feel like my whole entire life was spinning out of control.

I sat down in my car and put the keys in the ignition. I literally felt like my brain was fucking spinning. My eyes slid to the glove box. Fuck. Did I really want to go to my cousin's birthday party high?

Uhhh . . . Yeah?

I opened the glove box and shook out two Oxycodone pills. I had built up a pretty go threshold to them at that point in my life, so two wouldn't really do much more than take the edge off the night. If I _really _wanted to fly, then I'd need a couple more. Fortunately for my cousin, I respected him at least a little more than that.

I leaned my head back against my seat and waited for the drugs to kick in. Ah, yes. That was nice. I felt like I was floating, surrounded in a comfortable fog and all I could do was smile.

It still wasn't enough to completely forget, though.

I turned on my car and headed for the Applebee's.

~x~

Dinner was like being in frat boy Hell. Like . . . The seventh circle. Err . . . Well, more like the third or fourth. I guess his friends weren't _that_ bad. Or maybe it was just the pills helping me cope. Who fuckin' knows?

My cousin's name was Riku. With long silver hair past his shoulders and bangs that shrouded his startling aquamarine eyes, he was pretty much a Godlike human who made girls faint at the drop of a dime. He was tall and muscular and acted like a slightly less alcoholic version of his frat brothers. He was 23 and engaged to some girl name Namine, and he attended Destiny University with every intention of becoming a cardiologist. We pretty much had nothing in common. Sometimes I wondered if he only invited me to things because our mothers were sisters, and sometimes I wondered if I only agreed to come because I was desperate. Or lonely. Or some equally depressing emotion or feeling.

Shit, I was a mess, wasn't I?

After we ate Applebee's shitty excuse for food (you _do _realize that all of their food is microwaved crap, right?), we all as a group headed out of the restaurant and walked across the parking lot to a seedy-looking bar. It had no windows and only one door at the front from which bluish-green light spilled out. There was a sign above the door that read "Bar Oblivion", and an old Vietnamese lady with no business in crop tops standing outside and waving us over.

"Yoo-Hoo~!" she screeched, pushing her saggy breasts together. "Come on in. Come have drink with me ~~!"

Riku slung an arm around my shoulders amidst the sound of his friends laughing derisively at the lady, who were already tipsy from the Applebee's bar. He grinned down at me.

"That one's for you, little cousin," he joked.

"Uhh, how about nah?" I said, laughing. "You can have her. Happy birthday."

"Eh, how about we see what's inside, first?"

We all stopped for a second, because one of Riku's friends wanted to know what a hostess bar even was. Frankly, so did I.

"Hostess bar are legit," Riku said to the group, taking his arm away from me because he was one of those guys who used his hands to speak. "It literally is a place where you go into the bar, there are all these hot young girls waiting for you, you pick the ones you like ,and you bring them to you table. As long as you buy them drinks every fifteen minutes or so, those bitches will do whatever you want them to do for as long as your wallet is open, ya feel me?"

I frowned. That sounded kind-of illegal. Not that I really cared about the law or anything like that, but still. How old were these girls gonna be? I barely liked strip clubs. How in the Hell would I ever find myself liking a place where you could buy an easy fuck for the cost of a shot of vodka?

Riku's friends were totally into it, however, and in the next few seconds, we all went inside. The music was your typical club music: random hits from today's charts and radio stations mingled with some house music and dubstep. True to Riku's word, every stool at the bar had a girl sitting in it. The bar was to the right. To the left was the rest of the club—there was a stage with a pole where girls were dancing in thongs and tiny bras, booths and tables, and tall potted plants that were positioned in such a way as to hide whatever was going on in the booths. At the back of the room was a pool table where a large group of older men were laughing and playing pool, clinking their alcoholic beverage glasses with the shot glasses of scantily clad girls that didn't look a day over 19. The floor was carpeted and the teal glow the dim lasts cast shadows everywhere. I felt like I had just walked into a cave. An illegal sex cave.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

If you couldn't guess, that was sarcasm.

Riku and his friends started gravitating toward some of the girls at the bar. Another old Vietnamese lady was standing behind the bar, watching the interactions like a hawk. She seemed like the owner. Not really feeling up to joining in the "festivities," I sat down at the only empty stool there was (way in the corner by the ATM and the wall) and flagged down the old lady.

"Hi," she said, smiling faintly. "Do you want buy drink?"

I rested my elbow on the counter and put my chin in my hand. I was already bored.

"Sure," I sighed. "Shot of Patron."

"Okay, 15 dollars."

I handed her the cash and waited for my poison. As she poured it, I looked around a bit more. Shit, I remember that place sure looked weird. It kinda made me feel grimy just being inside of the building. None of the girls looked old enough to be out of high school—save for the old Vietnamese ladies that were wandering around—and the overall atmosphere made me feel uncomfortable. Why would anyone want to work in that place? I felt like you might as well just stand on the corner as a prostitute and flag down a john.

The old lady set the shot glass down in front of me. "My name Mama. Call me Mama-san," she said.

"Are you Japanese?" I asked blankly, knocking back the Patron with lightning speed. Yes, I noticed she didn't card me, but it wasn't like I was idiotic enough to say anything to her about it.

"No, I'm Vietnamese," she said with another smile. "Mama-san is what the boss is called at hostess bars like this."

"Mm," I said. There was a TV on the upper half of the wall behind the bar, so I trained my eyes upon it. A Korean drama was playing, the subtitles flashing yellow across the screen. Man, I remember this day like it was yesterday. Weird, huh?

The girl sitting on the stool next to mine turned to look at me. I glanced in her direction and she gave me a small smile and batted her eyelashes a bit. She had cropped black hair and shining cobalt eyes.

"Slow night tonight," she said. Her voice was as small as her.

"Is it?" I said, deciding not to be rude for once. It had to be difficult to work there, so I didn't want to make her feel worse than she probably already did.

"Yeah, it's a Friday. It should be more busy," she said with a slight giggle.

The Mama-san was eyeing me, slowly wiping down the same stretch of counter repeatedly.

"I've never been to a hostess bar," I said. "So I wouldn't know."

"Oh?" She tilted her head coyly to the side. "Do you want me to explain it to you? It can be kinda confusing at first."

"No, that's okay," I said, offering her a warm smile. "I'm just here for my cousin's birthday."

I pointed to Riku, who had grabbed one of the hostess's hands and was walking over to a booth with her. His friends had all already picked their girls and found booths. It grossed me out.

"That's Olette with your cousin," the girl told me. "She's one of our top girls. She always goes home with at least 200 bucks a night."

"He has a girlfriend," I said, shaking my head in disapproval. "She'd freak the fuck out if she knew he was here."

"They all have girlfriends," she snorted, crossing her legs and sitting back. "Girlfriends, wives, mistresses . . . You learn to ignore it."

I couldn't help but look at the way she was dressed. She had on a skin-tight leather minidress with short sleeves, so she wasn't dressed in as revealing a manner as the other hostesses. I supposed she'd be all right to keep me company until I could get out of this shithole.

I flagged down the Mama-san and asked for another Patron. Her eyes slid to the girl and then to me.

"Do you want buy her a drink?" Mama-san asked, still smiling. Somehow I knew if I said no, then that smile might not be so bright and welcoming. The bouncer standing guard at the inside of the door suddenly felt like he was looming behind me.

"Sure," I said, looking to the girl. "What do you want?"

The girl smiled brightly, all white teeth, and then ordered the same thing as me. Expecting it to be 30 dollars total, I pulled out a twenty and a ten, setting it down on the counter.

"Thank you," she said. "My name is Xion, by the way."

"Nice to meet you," I told her, feeling a little out of my element being so polite when I was usually an ass to everyone I met. "I'm Sora."

Mama-san put down two shots and said, "Total is 55 dollars."

My eyes just about shot out of my skull. "55 _dollars_?! I thought it was only 15?"

"Girls' drinks are 20 dollars, but Patron is 40 because it's expensive," Mama-san explained, her smile seeming not so pleasant.

Xion placed her hand on my forearm and I felt my skin prickle. I didn't like to be touched, and I certainly didn't want to spend 40 dollars on a shot of Patron.

"I . . . Uh, actually don't want to buy her a drink anymore. Sorry." My eyes darted around, looking for an escape. I decided that I should just go outside. I could wait outside for Riku to come out and see where I was, and then if he was okay with it, maybe I could just go home. The Mama-san didn't seem too happy and Xion looked a little miffed, so I just stood up and backed away a little bit.

And then, everything changed.

I heard beads clacking together, and then I saw a curtain made of them behind the pool table. There was a hall behind the curtain and two doors that led to bathrooms. A couple of girls were sashaying out of the beaded curtain, giggling and laughing with each other, giving the ogling men at the pool table some less-than-innocent smiles. One of the girls was taller and had layered, edgy azure hair, and the other . . . Well, I bet you can guess who the other girl was.

My jaw dropped as the girls came near. They stood by the bar, and the blue-haired girl said something to the Mama-san before she went to join the group at the pool table. I walked over quickly and stood next to the other girl.

"You, Kairi, are not supposed to be in a place like this." All politeness gone, I switched back to my regular uncaring and lazy drawl.

Kairi looked up at me, seemingly startled and embarrassed to see me there. She was wearing a tiny pink lace crop top with spaghetti straps and a pair of tiny black shorts that rode up almost like underwear. Her feet were encased in black platform heels, and her long hair was flowing down her back. She wore baby pink blush, coral lip stain, and long, wispy fake eyelashes and when she looked up at me in surprise, she looked like a little doll to me.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" she hissed, the angelic expression melting into one of annoyance.

Surprised to hear that Irish accent talking in such a vulgar manner, I crossed my arms over my broad chest and arched one eyebrow at her.

"What the fuck are _you _doing here?" I leaned down closer to her. She smelled like cherries. "You're 17. You could get arrested for even stepping foot into a place like this."

"I don't think it's any of your business," she shot back, putting her hands on her shapely hips. "And anyway, I asked you first. Why are you here?"

"Does it matter? I'm a paying customer, just like anyone else." Feeling the overwhelming urge to get her into a booth so I could finally have a chance to talk to her and find out why the Hell she was in here, I waved down the Mama-san and ordered us two sodas. Of course, I still had to pay 20 dollars for Kairi's Sprite, but mine was only 2 bucks. Ridiculous. I grabbed her hand and dragged her to an empty booth, the music pounding around us and her heels clicking along behind me. She made a sound of protest, but I just _had _to talk to her.

"Sit down," I told her. "Please."

"Why should I?" she asked. "Do you even know what we _do _here?"

I gave her a weird look. "Dude, I don't want to fuck you. Just sit down."

"I have to sit on the same side as you, though," she said in a low voice, casting a couple furtive glances around. "It's Mama-san's rules."

And here is where I get _super _mortified. I blushed. I actually _blushed_. Arrogant asshole genius that I was, and a girl with a bitchy attitude made me blush. I looked her up and down, seeing that she still had bruises all over her body, but decided ultimately that now was not the time to question her about those. I just wanted to know why she was in this bar.

Kairi and I just stared at each other, a silent stand-off warring between us, and finally, she slid into the booth. I slowly sat down beside her and turned to look at her. We continued to gaze at one another. In her eyes, I could tell that she was totally not comfortable being in this situation. I mean, who would be? Imagine seeing your student teacher at a bar where you were practically wearing underwear and were selling your body in the booths?

Of course, I wanted to know _why _she was selling her body in the booths, if that's even what went down in this club.

"Go ahead and ask me," Kairi said, looking away and sounding angry. "I know you just wanted to get me over here so you could touch me. So go ahead and ask me what you want me to do to you."

I felt my heart skip a beat. "Wh-What? That's not—"

"I'm not a damn idiot," she said. Her eyes bored holes into me like daggers. "I see the way you look at me in class. You just want to fuck me, like all the rest of them."

"Kairi, no!" I spluttered, at a loss for words in the first time in my entire life. I had a vocabulary that was as vast and wide as the Pacific Ocean, and here I was, stuttering like an idiot. "What the Hell?"

"Do you even _know_ where you _are_?" she asked, looking at me as though I were mentally ill. "This is a hostess bar. You buy my time, not my drink. I'm required to do whatever you tell me to during the time you buy."

"Like a prostitute." I blurted out, unable to stop myself.

She appeared hurt. "Yeah," she snarled. "Like a prostitute."

"But . . . _Why_?" I shook my head slowly.

"It's none of your business," she said, suddenly standing up and pushing the table away. I stared up at her in horrified shock as she placed one leg on either side of my legs and straddled my hips, looking down at me with a completely changed look in her eyes.

"Wh-What the f-fuck?" I said breathlessly, holding my hands up by my head. The potted plant beside us was hiding what we were doing from all of Riku's friends, though I was pretty sure they were otherwise engaged. "I do _not _want to—"

"You can't fool me, _teacher_," she said, her voice sounding like audible velvet. She lowered the straps of her top, nearly exposing her breasts, and leaned forward. "I know what you want. You don't have to pretend."

_What the fuck was going on_?!

"I literally do not want to do anything to you," I said firmly, placing my hands gingerly on the straps of her shirt and pulling them back into place. I gulped, feeling my forehead prickling with unshed sweat. "Kairi, I want you to get off of me and talk to me. I just want to get to know you."

"What if I don't want to get to know you?" she said, trailing a finger down the side of my face. I felt goosebumps springing up in its wake. "What if I want you to get your money's worth?"

As gorgeous as I thought she was, I couldn't rectify indulging her intense desire to distract me or whatever it was she was doing. The fact of the matter was, she was 17. She was 17 and she was my student. She was 17 and this was not a good place for her. When I thought about it, I felt this insane need to try and talk her into quitting.

"I didn't buy your time so I could do shit to you," I said in as strong a voice as I could muster with her slowly grinding her hips against mine. "I _just_ want to _talk_."

"I _can't _just talk," she said in an exasperated tone, throwing her hands up. "My job is to do this. My job is not to just talk to you. I mean, it's part of it, but it's not the whole thing."

"But why would you _want_ to do this job?"

With an exaggerated sigh, she slid off of me and sat in-between me and the wall again. "I wasn't kidding. I don't know you. You're just my teacher. It's not your business."

I sighed. "Well . . . Could I get to know you?"

She looked at me sharply, then looked down at the tabletop. "There's no point."

"To me there is," I replied.

"No. It doesn't matter," she said acidly, gulping down her Sprite as fast as possible. "Now, are you gonna buy me another drink or not? Because if you want me to stay here, you have to buy me another."

I pulled out another 20 and set it down. "Fine."

She stared at me for a long minute and then scowled. "You know what? No. I don't want to talk to you. Let me out of the booth."

"What? But . . ." I trailed off, feeling awkward.

"Let me out," she repeated.

Begrudgingly, I scooted out so she could move. Before she could go, I grabbed her hand. It was clammy and cold. I didn't want her to walk away without at least knowing I wasn't going anywhere.

"I can help you," I said as a desperate, last-ditch effort. "You don't have to work here. You're my student. If you need help, I will help you."

"I don't need help!" she said angrily whirling around to glare up at me. "I _like_ working here. I _like _this job. I make hundreds of dollars a night and all I have to do is let men touch me."

I clenched my hand around hers. "Is that _all _they ask you to do?"

She hesitated for a second and then breathed out, "No. I've never actually had sex with any of the customers. Only touching. But that's still not your business! And you better not say anything to anyone about this at school, got it?"

With that, she stormed off toward the bar and sat down on one of the stools, deliberately facing forward. I remember feeling simultaneously enraged and helpless. I had never felt this way before—never so passionate about helping someone. To be honest, I didn't know what to do with such selfless emotions.

Sighing and deciding "fuck Riku," I walked out of the club and headed straight for my car.

"Sora, wait!"

I heard Kairi's voice behind me and turned in the parking lot to look at her. She really did look sexy, but I felt wrong for even thinking such a thing. Guilty and wrong. I was only 20, but still. I walked back toward her, and she met me halfway.

"Thank you," she said softly with no smile. "For the drink, I mean. Every little bit counts."

I was confused. Why did she even need this kind-of money? She was an exchange student. Her host family was expected to provide everything she needed, weren't they? My eyes then traveled to her bruises again and a red flag went up in my mind. In spite of myself and our earlier tense argument, my fingers reached up to touch a particularly nasty bruise by her collarbone.

"I won't give up," I said to her, not really knowing or understanding where the words were coming from. "I'll come back every night if I have to."

"Why?" she whispered, pushing my hand away and taking a step back.

"Because I want to get you out of here," I responded in earnest. "You don't belong in a place like that. So even if I have to come back every night, I promise you I'll convince you to quit."

Still not smiling, Kairi started to walk away, her eyes never leaving mine as she walked backwards, hands behind her back.

"You can try . . ."

And she went back inside, leaving me feeling empty and dismayed.

If only I had known what I was getting myself into.

_I still hear you in this house._

_I still feel you in my bones._

_And like the portraits in the halls,_

_I wish you were staring back at me._

~x~

**Song: **_**"Another You" by Of Mice &amp; Men**_

**Author's Note: Okay, so I have a secret to kind-of . . . Expose. A lot of the reasons why I am such a flaky writer lately is because during the Summer and Fall, I worked at a hostess bar just like this one in Hawaii. It was awful. Horrible things happened to me. Horrible things that have affected every part of my life, from my day-to-day behaviors to my relationship to even my friendships. I will be very graphic when it comes to the hostess bar in this story, and all of the things that will and have happened to Kairi in this bar are all factual things that happened to me at the hostess bar. I ask you all to exercise discretion in your future reviews about it because this is going to very difficult for me to write, but I feel that I need to write it in order to move on in my life from it. Thank you for your understanding, and thank you for your support. I enjoy your reviews thoroughly, and I love seeing the favorites/follows. Until next time!**


	4. Three Questions

_The innocent look on her face is all fake._

_She's worn out and worn down from all the one night stands._

_Never any interest in a real man or a love that will last._

* * *

Okay, first of all I should probably let you guys know that my love life is like . . . Nonexistent. Being smart and over-average attractive doesn't automatically land you chicks. Especially when you're an insufferably arrogant ass like me. I remember this one time, some girl wanted to give me her number and I told her that I didn't date girls with an IQ less than 70. It was supposed to be a joke because an anything less than a 70 is classified as mentally ill, but she didn't know that. Long story short, I ended up not getting her number that day. I also learned a valuable lesson.

I am not funny. Like, at fucking all.

But you know what _is _kinda funny? Kairi having a catfight at school. A catfight that I just so happened to break up.

Yeah, you heard me right. I was walking from the Cafeteria to Terra's class at the end of lunch, a stack of freshly-printed tests for the next period in my arms, when I saw a crowd gathered around some of the lockers in the Senior English hallway. It was difficult to tell what was going on, but I was tall enough to see that in the center of the raucous crowd were two distinctly separate groups facing each other. A stand-off?

As I came closer, I realized that I recognized the voice of one of the girls.

"You're a fucking slut, you know that?" one girl said—someone I didn't know. "Everyone knows you work at that bar downtown. My friend _saw_ you there."

"And how would she know that unless she was there, too?" the voice who responded was calm and had an Irish accent. It was Kairi.

"She works at Applebee's, for your information, you whore."

"Okay," Kairi said in a monotone. "So what, am I supposed to care what you think of me? Fuck off, mate. You Americans think your opinions are so valid and important."

"You bitch. You fucking bitch. I _saw _you looking at my boyfriend."

I started to try and push my way through the crowd. I could tell that this was going nowhere fast. Either that, or it was going to end in fighting. Brutal feline fighting that involved pointy ears, whiskers, and claws. As a guy, I wanted to stand and watch. As a student teacher, I knew I needed to stop the fight as soon as possible. As myself . . . I just wanted to protect Kairi because it was Kairi.

"Maybe you should keep a tighter leash on him," Kairi replied to the unknown girl who was glaring daggers at her. Kairi was—as usual—wearing a crop top and a pair of shorts today, coupled with a pair of black combat boots. She tossed her crimson hair over her shoulder and crossed her arms over her chest. "It's not _my _problem if _your _boyfriend can't stop staring at me."

A split-second later, the girl launched herself across the distance and latched her fingers into Kairi's hair. The crowd immediately erupted into a noisy cacophony of cheers and chants, all while the two girls pulled each other's hair and slammed each other into lockers.

"_Hey_!" I yelled, but my voice wasn't loud enough. I was a good few inches taller than everyone there, but it was like I was invisible. I shoved some kids aside and strode over to Kairi, grabbing her upper arm and pushing the girl I didn't know away and to the side.

After I did my teacher stuff like sending kids to the office and dispersing the crowd, I insisted upon walking Kairi to the office myself. I wasn't _actually _going to take her to the office, of course, but I wanted a chance to talk to her.

"Look, about last night at the bar," I started, but she stopped dead in her tracks and fixed me with a glowering stare.

"Really?" she said sarcastically. "You're gonna talk about that in _school_?"

I remember feeling the closest to embarrassed that I think I've ever felt, but I kept my cool and stood there with my hands in the pockets of my skinny jeans and just stared at her.

"I'm trying to apologize," I said, arching one eyebrow. "You gonna let me?"

"I dunno," she shot back, hands upon her shapely hips. "You gonna stop trying to out me right here in the hallway?"

A couple of kids walked by at that moment, speaking in hushed whispers and regarding us warily. I grabbed her arm and dragged her off into a little inlet between two sets of lockers. I turned to face her again, blocking her pathway away from me. I knew it wasn't exactly "right," but at that point, I didn't care. Honestly, when it came to Kairi, I didn't know what demons overtook me but they did a damn good job of making me forget my place as a student teacher in her English class.

"I'm not trying to get you in trouble, dude, I'm just trying to say I'm sorry for the other night. I was an asshole," I said.

She leaned back against the wall, staring up at me through her eyelashes. "Aren't you always an asshole?"

I couldn't stop the smirk that spread across my lips. "I can't confirm or deny that."

Her smile faded and the stormy look was back. "Just do me a favor and leave me alone about stuff, okay?" she said angrily. "What I do outside of school is none of your business, and I just want to be left alone."

She started to push past me, but I grabbed her hand to stop her.

"I'm just trying to get to know you."

"You want to get to know me?" she said snappishly before yanking her hand out of mine. The bell rang, signaling the end of the lunch period. Kids were starting to appear in the hallways, laughing and joking from lunchtime escapades.

I looked at Kairi, waiting for her to continue.

She gave me an evil yet sweet smile. "Then come buy me a 20$ soda, like everyone else."

I let her walk off at that point, knowing that her telling me to come be one of her customers was probably as good as it was gonna get. Not that I was trying to buy her or screw her or anything, I just . . . Well, I literally just wanted to get to know her. Looking back, I think it had something to do with the bruises I had seen on her the first few times I'd seen her. Maybe the bruises and a little bit of genuine curiosity that surrounded me regarding the fact that she came from Ireland and worked at a hostess bar. I mean, who comes to America as an exchange student and then finds themselves in employment at a _hostess_ bar? Seriously? Talk about the American dream.

That very same night, though, I found myself sitting in my car outside the bar, debating whether or not to go inside. I knew that if I went inside, I could buy her a drink and try to convince her to just talk to me, instead of be all over me like she had the first time. But if I did happen to go inside, I was risking my job. Like, big time. Did I want to do that?

I took some pills to calm myself down, and then I took one more to take the edge off. I noticed that I was running low on my supply at that point, so I was going to have to get some more. I always liked to buy mine off of this weirdo who hung out downtown, so maybe I'd go looking for him later on that night if I had time. Once the high kicked in, I felt like I was on Cloud 9, and I got out of the car.

Inside, the Mama-san recognized me, waving me over to sit with the ravenette from the first time. I remembered her name, believe it or not, and immediately pulled out a twenty. I slipped it to her under the counter of the bar and gave her a small smile.

"How's it tonight?" I asked. "Still slow?"

"For me it is," Xion responded, squeezing my forearm discreetly in thanks as she accepted the tip. "As usual. Did you come back just to see me?"

"Not tonight," I said, my eyes scanning the rather empty bar in search of the Irish redhead. She was nowhere to be found. I wondered if she was even working tonight. "But I suppose I could sit for awhile."

"You want buy her drink?" the Mama-san asked, giving me a sour look. I knew she had seen me give Xion the cash.

"Sure," I said, handing over yet another 20$ from my meager salary. Thank God I paid rent with my savings, because I had a feeling this bar was going to clean me out.

"So what do you do for a living?" Xion asked, sipping from the glass the Mama-san passed her.

"I student teach over at Destiny Hearts High School," I told her. I didn't feel like ordering myself a drink that night, so I just focused on Xion while I waited for Kairi to show up.

"That's interesting," Xion said. "I used to go there."

"Really?" I looked at her. "What class?"

"Class of 2013," she said. She was wearing a simple pair of blue skinny jeans and a white tank top. Simple, but she did look kinda cute.

I grinned. "That would have been my class, but I graduated early."

"I know," she said with a slight laugh. "We had a couple of classes together. Back then, my hair was super long, though."

You're most likely wondering now what point Xion has to my story. Because obviously, if I'm telling you a story, the only characters I would deign to mention would be important ones, right? Well, it turns out Xion was more important than I could ever have thought.

"I don't really remember you, I'm so sorry," I said sincerely, marveling at how much less arrogant I was when I talked to her.

She sipped her drink and kept her eyes wide and innocent. "I dated your brother."

I froze. I had no words. I didn't want to think about this. I couldn't. I didn't even want to wait for Kairi anymore. I had to go. Slowly and without a word, I got up and turned to go. Xion asked me what was wrong, but I ignored her. I had just received a piece of information that I hadn't been expecting nor had I been prepared for. There was no way I was going to be able to look at Xion again without seeing . . . Well, anyway, I just needed to leave.

Too bad Kairi had just walked in at that moment. She was wearing a red-and-black plaid pleated uniform skirt and a short sleeved white crop top. Her platform heels were sparkling black and sky high. We looked into each other's eyes, and then she put her hands on her hips.

"Why am I not surprised that you're here again?" she said.

"Because you told me to come buy you a drink." I forgot all about Xion and slid back into my regular personality. I smirked. "So I'm here to buy you a drink."

Kairi worried her lower lip between her stark white teeth and then I saw her signal the Mama-san.

"Fine. I'll humor you. But only because you came all the way down here and waited for me."

We waited for her soda to get poured, I paid the twenty, and then Kairi led me off to a booth. She slid into the inside and then I sat down next to her.

"I hate these booths," Kairi said after a long silence, taking a sip off of her straw.

"How come?" I asked, drumming my fingers on the tabletop.

"Because sometimes girls have sex with the customers on them. Or they give them like, handjobs and stuff."

I felt grossed out, but I made no moves to get up. I was here on a mission, and I had every intention of completing that mission.

"So—"

Kairi held up a hand to silence me, pushing her hair back over her shoulders afterward. "I don't want to play 20 questions with you. We both know you could get fired or arrested just for being here because I'm 17."

"Well, you could get fired for working here. You're 17," I shot back.

"Why?" she challenged. "I'm only drinking soda."

"Um, the sexual shit?" I gave her a pointed look. "Pretty sure that constitutes as illegal activities."

Kairi guzzled down the rest of her soda and then fixed me with a withering glare. "If you want to get to know me or whatever, then you can buy me another drink. And like I said—I don't want to play 20 questions. You can ask me three things, and then you need to go so I can get some real customers. Customers who pay."

"Fine," I said, not feeling up to arguing with the little firecracker. I raised my hand to the bartender and a small Asian guy hopped off of one of the stools and came running to take my order. He gave me flirty looks and tried to get me to buy him a drink, too, but I politely declined and then paid attention to Kairi again.

"Okay, ask me. But nothing too serious."

I sighed. "All right. Why are you here in America? Like, why are you an exchange student?"

She looked at me as though I were stupid. "Um, because America is the land of opportunity? I don't know, mate, it's just what I chose to do. Why does it matter?"

". . . Okay, I guess that's still an answer."

She made an exaggerated expression with a roll of her eyes and drank her entire soda in one go. She fixed me with a devious smirk and I wordlessly ordered her another drink. Another twenty bucks . . . Gone.

"Why are you working here, of all places to work?" I asked.

"Nope," she said. "Too personal. Ask me something else."

Sighing in frustration, I tried, "Are you planning on going to an American or Irish college?"

"American," she said. She finished her second drink. "But I have to do two years in an American high school before they'll admit me to an in-state University. Question 3, hurry—my customer gets here in like, five minutes."

"Your customer?"

She nodded. "His name is Xehanort. He's good for like, 8 drinks per hour. But he usually only stays for an hour or so. He's kinda weird, but I7m the only girl in the whole bar who can stand to sit with him."

"Hm. Well—"

"Nope, that was your third question. No more," she said, smiling as she stood up and tried to push me out of the booth. In the next split second, I found myself standing alone at a table with an empty drink, watching as Kairi greeted some scarred, gnarled, and hunched-over old guy with no hair and a goatee at the door. She linked arms with him and took him back behind a curtain that led to the back of the bar. I knew what was going to happen back there. I don't know how, but I just knew, and I was pissed. I had spent nearly 100$ tonight to try and get to know Kairi, and all I had gotten was a few useless answers that told me nothing.

Vowing never to set foot in that bar nor speak to Kairi outside of school ever again, I stormed out of the building without even saying goodbye to Xion.

Hm, I guess I am kind-of funny then. Because you know for a damn fact I went back there every night for the next two weeks, waiting for the chance to get past three non-personal questions. But maybe that's not funny. Maybe that's just pathetic.

Fuck my life.

_Oh what a waste!_

_What a waste of a beautiful face._

_Was it the way she was raised, or just the terrible choices she's chosen to make?_

~x~

**Song: **_**"Jezebel" by Memphis May Fire**_

**Author's Note: I hope you guys don't worry too much about how slow the relationship development seems. Things will pick up eventually, especially since this is the main character telling you a story in the form of memories, so there will be a little bit of time skipping and jumping around. Anyway, thank you to all the favorites and the follows and the reviews!**

**Until next timeeeeee!**


	5. Weird

_Singing like it's a full moon_

_Careless now that he has you_

_Turns you on to the right songs_

_Promises that you're hooked on_

* * *

So like, it's not really considered normal to go to a hostess bar and buy a girl's drinks. It really isn't. It's actually kinda creepy, to be honest. I guess that's why after two weeks of nonstop attempts to interact with Kairi only to have her magically "disappear" whenever I showed up, I chose to stop going altogether. I was starting to get a little obsessive, anyway and I really needed to focus on work.

"Sora, why did you grade their essays like this?" Terra had asked me one Wednesday afternoon, pushing up his glasses on the end of his nose. It was something he did often, and I had come to realize that he did that when he was irritated.

I had then leaned back in my seat at the desk he'd set up for me, scrolling through my Facebook on my phone. It was a free period for us, so I didn't really care to be doing much more than internet stuff even though Terra technically wanted me to make tomorrow's lesson plan for him.

"Because I didn't want to read them," I said to him absentmindedly, typing a comment on one of Riku's ridiculous statuses.

Terra looked at me sharply. "Sora, if you ever want to move forward and be able to teach Remedial English, you're going to have to put in a little more effort."

"'Kay," was all I said, earning myself an exasperated sigh.

"You're lucky I _like_ your smartass attitude, kid," he snorted.

"I aim only to please, master," I muttered. I never really cared what anyone thought of me. Terra was cool and all, but I knew his word wasn't final. The Principal loved me too much.

"Okay, well going forward, can you please use the system I taught you to grade?" Terra said, taking a red marker and editing the essay I'd previously graded. "I need you to take things in my class more seriously."

I rolled my eyes then, because if I had a fucking nickel for every time I'd heard someone tell me to "take things more seriously," I'd be rich.

Things in my life were getting pretty weird at this point. Remember how I said I went to that hostess bar every night for two weeks? Well, honestly think about it. I went to a bar every single _night _for _two entire weeks_ just to gain a word or two from some Irish girl I barely knew. _Why_? No, seriously . . . _Why_? I guess I finally woke up one day and realized how weird I was being and stopped going, but trust me—I was still feeling the urge to go. Isn't that fucking weird?

The urge, in fact, was getting stronger by the day. Like I literally could _not _stop thinking about Kairi. Which made me feel like, nauseous and stuff because I didn't really know her that well and I had never really felt that strongly over a girl before. I thought it was weird. It was almost like the urge was this separate thing inside of me, living and breathing and talking to me. I know that sounds real uckin' crazy, but I have no other words to describe how it felt. I didn't want to ever go back there, but at the same time, I felt like I couldn't help it.

That night, however, I definitely got some answers.

~x~

In the car after work, I just sat there and stared at the empty pill bottle. I didn't want to go buy more, but if there was one itch that was more painful than my urge to go to the bar and see Kairi, it was my addiction. I hadn't, at that point in time, had any in a few days because I'd run out. I didn't want to buy more because I knew what I was doing wasn't healthy, but I'd spent all of my extra money at the bar and only had enough leftover for rent. I was addicted, but I wasn't a junkie. I knew better than to spend my rent. But still . . . I wanted them.

I drove to the skate park after that. I dunno why, but something about feeling the wind in my hair and the wheels rolling beneath my feet took my mind off of things. I may have been a cynical, sarcastic dude, but even I had my own mental and emotional issues. Sometimes a little air in the bowl was all it took, and no, I am _not _talking about weed.

Though I admit, the occasional bowl of _that _sort is not something I oppose.

Anyway, I skateboarded around the park for awhile, glad that it was getting too late for any middle schoolers to be there. God, those kids were fucking dumb. All they did was show off their basic ass tricks that they learned from a magazine, trading stolen cans of their father's beer for porno magazines. Then there was always gaggles of giggling schoolgirls hanging around the edges of the park, wearing belly shirts and bikini tops to show off their nonexistent boobs in the hopes that their 12- and 13-year-old compatriots would ask them out. Don't let me forget to mention the weirdo group of high school dropouts who sell marijuana and ecstasy tablets in the far corner, fucking with girls who are way too young for them. Skate parks were a ridiculous place to be on a sunny day. Luckily for me, once the sun started to go down, I had free reign of the park.

Like I was saying, I was alone in the park skating in the bowls and up the ramps, sliding down the stairway railings. I was having a grand old time, totally not thinking about Kairi when the craziest shit happened.

I was coming up the edge of one of the small bowls when I saw her standing at the edge of the park. Yes, Kairi. She had her hands folded over her chest and she was wearing another one of her skimpy outfits, her hair pulled up into a messy bun and face covered in makeup as usual. She was just watching me, looking as though she were waiting.

Nevermind the fact that I didn't know how she'd found me, I was drawn to her immediately. Every urge I'd been resisting came screaming back into my body, firing off my brain's synapses, and next thing I knew, I was skidding to a halt in front of her.

"What the Hell are you _doing _here?" I asked, unable to stop myself from sounding rudely incredulous.

She just stared at me. "You haven't been in in a couple of days."

"Yeah, so?" I gave her a weird look. "It's not like we get along. You don't really have any desire to get to know me, so why should I keep coming and dropping shit tons of money on you? Nah, bruh, no thanks." I turned to go, but her hand lashed out and grabbed my wrist.

I kid you not, it felt like my whole entire body was on fire in that one moment. I still can't explain it to this day. I turned around and gazed down at her, my mind roaring at me to grab onto her and kiss her for reasons unknown.

"L-Let go of me," I said, my voice hardly above a choked whisper.

She did, and the feelings stopped. My brow furrowed and I looked at my wrist, almost as though I could see her handprint on my skin.

"I'm . . . Sorry," she said quietly. "I just have . . . Missed you, is all."

I tore my eyes away from my arm and locked eyes with her. She missed me? What the Hell? I'd been in her place of work every day for weeks and hadn't been able to get much more than her name from her, and now she _missed _me? What the literal _fuck_?

"Why?" I spluttered.

She took a step forward, casting a few furtive glances around, and then threw her arms around my neck. My eyelids fluttered shut in spite of themselves as I felt her soft lips against mine for the briefest of moments, and then here's where things get weird.

In what felt like seconds, I was on the ground, alone. Legitimately I have no fucking clue what the Hell happened, but one minute she had her mouth on mine in as innocent a way as stolen kisses can be, and then the next minute, everything was foggy. It was so weird, I could barely remember what I was even doing in the skate park. All I remembered was the fact that Kairi had kissed me, and the moments leading up to it. And where the heck _was _she now?

I remember jumping to my feet, looking around wildly for her, but I was alone in the darkness, the lights from the skate park shining down on me and illuminating a few yards around. Some guy was walking his dog, texting furiously on his cell phone, but he barely acknowledged me.

My blood chilled and I searched the air in front of me for answers.

When had the sun gone down?

~x~

The weirdness after that didn't happen again for awhile, and though I didn't forget about it, it just didn't seem to matter anymore. I don't know why it didn't matter anymore, but whatever—I guess it just didn't. It mattered all the way up until the next day at school, when Kairi walked into class and we looked at each other. She gave me the smallest of smiles, her cerulean eyes looked a bit prettier than usual, and then what happened between us the night before no longer mattered.

Terra walked up to me after class, his hands on his hips. "Do we have a problem, Sora?"

"Huh?" I had been watching the students file out of the room, but now I looked up at my master teacher with confusion.

"You aren't focusing anymore," Terra said. He placed a students' paper down on my desk in front of me. "This is the second time now that I've had to remind you to use my system of grading when looking over essays."

"Oh, sorry, dude, I just . . ." I frowned. I was having a hard time focusing on what he was saying. All I could think about was Kairi at this point. I needed to go find her before she went to her next class. I didn't know _why, _I just knew that I needed to find her. Things still weren't setting off many red flags or alarms in my head at this point, but looking back, I should have been concerned.

"This is the last time I'm going to ask you," Terra said, looking miffed as he watched me stand up. "Next time you just blindly mark someone a high score without actually reading their assignment, I'll have to talk to the Principal Zexion about this."

"Oh, because he's going to fire his favorite student teacher?" I snapped, unreasonably angry at the fact that he was standing in the way of me getting to Kairi. Seriously, I can not tell you how obsessed I was at that moment with finding that girl. I didn't care what Terra was saying—I just wanted him to move.

"Excuse me?" Terra took his glasses off. "What did you just say?"

"I gotta go," I said, shoving past him and dashing out into the hall. I shrugged on my black blazer as I walked down the hall, buttoning the singular button as my eyes scanned the hallways. I had to find Kairi and ask her what the fuck was going on.

I saw her at her locker a couple hallways over, grabbing out some books. Today, her long hair was cascading down her back and she was wearing a skintight black dress with a pair of black combat boots. My eyes roved over her body for a moment, and I stopped next to her. Students in the hallway had already started looking at us, probably finding it odd that one of the Senior English student teachers was at the locker of the Irish exchange student.

"You kissed me last night," I said. "It mattered, and then it didn't, and now I feel like it matters again. Why?"

She stared up at me, looking alarmed. "You . . . You remember that?"

I was asking her why she, a student had kissed me, a teacher, and all she was worried about was the fact that I _remembered_ that?

"Um, how the fuck would I _forget _it?" I hissed, trying to keep my voice down so nobody nearby could hear what we were talking about.

Kairi just turned and started to walk away, but I couldn't let her just leave like that. I grabbed her hand and as soon as I did, I felt that weird desire to kiss her again. I let go of her, and she turned to look at me over her shoulder.

"It was a mistake," she said quietly, eyes blazing, "Just forget about it."

"I—"

She whirled around completely and looked right into my eyes. "_Forget. About. It," _she practically snarled, and I don't know why, but it all suddenly didn't matter anymore. She walked away, off to her next class, and I couldn't remember why I was standing in the hall. I had a distinctly empty, unsettling feeling in my stomach that told me the best thing to do was turn right around and stay far away from Kairi, the mysterious girl from Ireland.

Wish I would have remembered that when I found myself staring up at the lazily blinking sign of Monaco Bar the next night.

Fuck.

_Sweet Ophelia_

_When young blood escapes_

_Boughs that break_

_Go up, up away_

~x~

**Song: **_**"Sweet Ophelia" by Zella Day**_

**Author's Note: Sorry for the late update, but I needed to figure out where I wanted this story to go. If you notice, the song **_**Compass **_**was used in a scene of one of the newer episodes of The Vampire Diaries. Cookies goes to the reviewer who can connect where they think this story plot is going with the song choice. :3 Hope you all are intrigued! See you next time!**


	6. What Do Monsters Feed On?

_There's no hope in a city where the vices all turn wild.__  
__She can't find her love, oh, that girl she turns to designer drugs.__  
__Both the walls are closing in now, what kind of home is this?__  
__What kind of home have we made? Where are you now?_

* * *

When I went into the bar, the employees acted extremely overjoyed to see me, waving me over to a booth and bringing me a free beer. I shrugged and took it, figuring that I had already stepped beyond the gates of Hell, I might as well imbibe while I was here. My eyes scanned the club, roving over the scantily clad hostesses wandering around, the dancers on the stage, and the patrons slumped over at the bar. Christ, this place was seedy.

I wanted to pretend I had no idea why I was here, but everyone knows that isn't fucking true, dude. I was hoping to talk to Kairi again, to find out more. I wanted to know why she had kissed me, why I was so invested in her life and what she was doing, and why the Hell I had passed out when she'd kissed me (that was kinda the most important question I had).

"Hey, you," chimed a quiet voice to my left.

I looked up and saw Xion standing there in a sparkling silver dress with spaghetti straps and a hem that barely covered her rear. The hair on the right side of her head was swept back into a butterfly clip and her heels were at least four inches high. I just blinked up at her. The last time I'd spoken with her, she'd presented me with a memory of my brother that I wasn't yet ready to face. I had known who she was in the back of my mind, but I had pushed my brother's memory so far away that anything tied to him had gone with it, so I'd forgotten who she was at first. At that point, I didn't think I'd ever really be able to face it and remember everything. I mean, I wasn't a pill-popper for nothing, was I? Still, whether she was walking reminder or not, I was still going to be polite because even if I had major mental issues, my parents had raised me right.

"Hey," I said, taking a swig of my beer.

She sat down next to me and I barely noticed that she was sitting awfully close. I knew that was their job.

"I'm not buying drinks tonight," I mentioned to her.

She nodded. "I figured. Are you here for your little redheaded clover?"

I looked at her sidelong and she just shook her head.

She went on, "She's in the back right now."

"The back," I reiterated, setting down my beer can. "And what does that even _mean_?"

She wrapped an arm through one of mine (because her boss was giving her the eye), and explained, "When a customer wants us to go into the back, they tell the Mama-san, and then someone leads the customer and the girl, whoever he chooses, behind the curtain. There's a booth back there, and basically anything goes."

I arched one eyebrow. "Anything goes?"

"Touching, messing around, sex. Mama-san doesn't care as long as he's buying drinks. And it's a minimum of 5 drinks just to go back there with the girl. The customers usually tip, too."

"Um, _okay_. Weird," I grumbled, feeling a bit weird at the thought of Kairi being back there. She was only eighteen years old and still just a young girl. She didn't need to be prostituting herself, let alone working in this club in the first place.

Xion shrugged. "It's just work."

"Not the kind of work either of you should be doing," I muttered. "Not that I really _care_."

Xion studied the side of my face for a moment before she said softly just under the volume of the music, "You do care, otherwise you wouldn't be in here waiting for her."

I took my arm away from hers. I didn't like the feeling of her hands on my skin. Her hands had been on my brother's skin, and it made me feel ill. I had forgotten because I _wanted _to, and I wasn't yet ready to remember.

"She kissed me at the skate park the other day," I said after another drink of beer. "I'm in here because I want to know why, and I want to know how she found me there. Because it was fucking weird."

Xion frowned. "That is kinda weird . . ."

"Yeah. But you know what? I guess in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't really matter." I turned to look at Xion. "So I think I'm just going to go."

Xion's frown deepened. "So you find out she goes into the back, and now all-of-a-sudden, you don't care about her anymore?"

I felt like I had just been slapped. "What?"

Xion sat up straight, looking full-on angry now. "Do you think we do this because we _want _to? Do you think I dress like a fucking slut and parade myself around for pigs like you because it's just a _fun fuckin' time_?"

"No?" I looked at her incredulously. This was hella bizarre and left-field.

Xion stood up. "She goes back there because she has to. She doesn't have a choice. None of us do. Once you're in this world, it's extremely hard to get out. So don't judge her for doing what she has to do. So what, she kissed you. So what, she kisses other people for money. She's still a person."

I didn't say anything.

Scowling, Xion leaned down into my face and hissed, "Girls like us don't fall for guys like you—guys who think they're owed something. Because that's why you're here isn't it? She kissed you, and now you feel like she owes you her body. Well, fuck off."

Before I could even blink, she turned and started yelling things at the Mama-san in Vietnamese, storming off to the bathroom and disappearing. I just sat there, looking bewildered and chastised at the same time. The Mama-san had come over and was now telling me that I needed to leave if I wasn't going to buy any drinks, but I knew Xion had said something to her to make her want to kick me out. Wordlessly and in a daze, I stood up and walked out of the bar.

I honestly couldn't believe that had just happened. Not only had Xion been completely _wrong _about why I was in there, but I had never been screamed at by a girl like that before. I mean, it _was _shocking to me that Kairi "went into the back" with men, but I wasn't _judging _her for it. I didn't think she should be working there and since I was her student teacher, I felt like I had some sort of say in what the students were doing. Even though I knew in my heart I didn't have a right, at that point, I could lose my job just for being in that place and Kairi as well as everyone else in that bar could be arrested.

I leaned against the wall and pulled out a cigarette. I could feel my skin itching in desire for pills, but since I didn't have any left right now, the cigarette would have to do.

Was I mad at Xion for yelling at me? Nah. Did I care? Sort-of. Maybe it was just my search for purpose in the universe or whatever, but I was definitely invested in Kairi's life and what she was doing. I didn't think she owed me anything, though. Well, anything besides an explanation.

"What the fuck are you doing here?!"

I took a drag off of my cigarette and looked to my left, toward the door. Kairi was standing there, her long hair pulled up into a high ponytail and her cerulean eyes glittering with rage. She was wearing a pair of jean shorts with rips and a black crop top with short sleeves. Her heels were just as high as Xion's, if not higher, and she looked up at me with disdain.

I slipped one hand into the pocket of my skinny jeans and shrugged. "Xion tell you I came?"

"Yes," she snapped. "And I thought I told you to just leave me alone."

"That'd be easier if you hadn't found me at the skate park and kissed me when you rightfully should have had no idea where the fuck I was," I stated nonchalantly, taking another drag. I blew smoke outward but kept my eyes on her.

"I told you to forget about it, though," she growled.

"Yeah, well I didn't. So fess up."

"No."

I tossed the cigarette aside, still glowing hot, and took a step toward her. I wasn't threatening her in any way and there was no anger in my facial expression. I just looked down at her as sincerely as I possibly could, hands resting lightly in my pockets, and beseeched her calmly.

"Please tell me," I said softly. "I can't stop thinking about it. I need to know."

She glared at me for a long moment, both of us waiting for the other to balk, and then she sighed. Her angry façade seemed to crumble and it was then that I noticed she had more bruising on her arms and legs, and her skin looked sallow beneath her make-up. I briefly wondered if someone at the bar was hurting her, but she merely opened her mouth and stared at me.

I looked at the fangs in her mouth and then I looked back at the bruising because it was . . .

Wait a _fucking minute._

_WAIT A FUCKING MINUTE WHAT THE FUCK_

My eyes nearly fell out of my skull and I stumbled backward, running a hand through my unruly chestnut hair in shock. And when I say shock, that is a severe understatement. I completely couldn't think about anything else besides the fact that she had fucking _fangs_? Were they like, filed down as a form of body modification? Were they just chipped? Because if they were natural, I wasn't sure my mind could wrap around it.

"That's why you can't stop thinking about it, and that's why you passed out," she said. I nearly choked on the air I was breathing as I watched her fangs retracted back into her gums, revealing her normal canines behind them.

"Wh-What?" I breathed, my eyes wide. I hadn't felt this alarmed, surprised, and alive in a long time.

"I feed off of your aura, Sora," she said, smiling sweetly. "Because if I feed off of your blood, the person I'm hiding from will find me. Oh, and you'll either die . . . Or become like me. And I don't really want to have to make that decision."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I felt like I was going to throw up. "Are those fake . . . ? What . . . ?"

"I'm going to feed off you again, Mr. Richardson," she said, her voice sounding weird and faraway to my ears. "Off of your aura. This time, you won't fall asleep until after."

She walked up to me, grabbed onto my face with her hands, and brought my lips down to hers much like she had the other night. When she kissed me this time, it was like every part of my body was exploding outward and inward, all at once. Think of a star in space, burning and burning and burning, and that was me. I couldn't stop myself. My hands gripped her hips as I desperately threw her up against the wall, tilting my head for deeper access to those lips, those enticing lips. My mind was screaming at me, a blazing whirlwind of colors and lights and noises, our tongues dancing as I completely lost control. Finally, after I started reaching for her breast, she shoved me backward and stared at me. Her hair was a completely mess, her lipstick was smeared, and her eyes were shining.

I watched in horror as her bruises disappeared, melting away into nothingness. She wiped the corner of her lips and smirked at me, stalking toward me in her heels with swaying hips.

"Don't worry—your aura will replenish," she whispered, her hands sliding up my chest and snaking around my neck. "And after this kiss . . . You _will _fall asleep."

In a daze, I just stood there when her lips touched mine again, and then everything faded away into nothingness for me, too.

~x~

I woke up in my car in the morning with no recollection of the night before. None whatsoever. I was parked outside the Monaco Bar, the only car in the parking lot, and I had no idea how or why I was there. I felt a little dizzy but once I woke up fully, I felt fine. I checked my phone, happy to see that I still had time to get home to change for work, and then I sat there for a moment. I tried to remember why I was there, but couldn't remember anything beyond taking a nap after work the previous day.

Alarmed, I checked the glove compartment for my pill bottle. It was empty, so I could have been high, but I had never gone driving and blacked out when I was high before. I never took enough pills to make me lose periods of time, especially not an entire night.

Looking at the pill bottle made my body start screaming, so the first place I drove to was my pharmacy. I walked in, the little bell above the door chiming, and the pharmacist didn't look happy to see me.

"Hey, Cid," I said awkwardly. I was usually uncaring of what everyone thought about me, but not Cid. Cid knew why I was taking the pills. Cid knew I shouldn't be taking them. Cid had been there.

"Hi, kiddo," he said, taking the toothpick he always chewed on out of his mouth. He put his hands on his hips. "What can I do ya for?"

I held up the pill bottle. My hand shook as I handed it to him. Every time I came in here, there was always a chance he would say no. It had been a year of this and any other pharmacist would have known that my prescription had expired by now.

"I need a refill," I gulped.

"You just got a refill two weeks ago," he said, setting the bottle on the counter and staring at me.

"I . . . I know." I hated feeling nervous. I stripped me of all of my arrogance and my confidence and made me feel weak. I hated feeling weak because then it left room for all my memories to come rushing in. But without the pills, my memories would come rushing in anyway.

I needed them.

"This is the _last _time, kid," Cid said begrudgingly. "I could lose my license for this."

"I'm . . . Sorry," I said, looking down in shame.

He went into the back to fill the prescription, and it took everything in me not to have an anxiety attack. I was struggling to keep my walls up. I could feel the memories threatening to rush in. It was like they were evil and they knew that it was almost time to attack. Once my pills were gone, I'd need a renewal on my prescription. A renewal that my doctor would never give me, seeing as I had no more injuries that needed painkillers.

But I couldn't keep doing this to Cid. I would have to find another way to get my pills after this last refill.

He handed me the bottle without a word, and then walked away to stock the shelves. Feeling sick with mortification and guilt, I trudged out of the store and got into my car. I stared at the pills. My panic about not having the ability to refill them again after this made me want to take the whole bottle. Because if I took the whole bottle, all the memories would be gone forever.

But I knew I couldn't do that. That's not what my brother would have wanted.

I made as if to put it back in the glove compartment, but I just couldn't. I needed _something_. Just a few of them . . . But I knew I had to go to work. I couldn't go to work high. If anyone noticed me acting differently, then it could get me fired. When I was on painkillers, I was totally out of it. I wouldn't even be able to drive.

Unless I only took one or two . . . Or even three. I could probably handle three . . .

_Don't do it._

The voice in my head was so loud that it felt like it was going around the entire car.

"What the fuck?" I said aloud, looking into the backseat for good measure. I waited, but no other sound came.

Nervously, I put the pill bottle back into the glove compartment, put on my seatbelt, and started the car. I put it off as some sort of auditory hallucination from whatever high I must have been on to forget last night, and then drove home to change for work.

~x~

I was so late to work that I ignored all the teachers and skateboarded through the halls to the Office to clock in. I hadn't had time to put on anything really nice, so I had settled on the same black skinny jeans from the night before, my Vans, a white V-neck, and had thrown on a black blazer for the Hell of it.

"Mr. Richardson!" Aerith gasped when I came skateboarding into the office. "What are you doing?!"

"I'm late," I sid breathlessly, hurrying over to the computer to clock in.

"It's all right," Principal Zexion said from his office, where the door was open and he was sitting at his desk. "Terra says you're doing an excellent job, so I'm not worried if you're late once or twice."

Before I could leave to get to class, I shot Zexion a weird look.

"Really?" I said, surprised. Terra and I hadn't exactly ended our last exchange on good terms. Why was he vouching for me? That was actually kinda bizarre.

"He says you're well on your way to getting that Remedial English class!" Zexion said with a bright smile. "Keep it up, and it will be as soon as second quarter."

"Uhh . . . Okay?" I said, feeling in a daze. I looked at Aerith and though at first, she had looked angry, now she was smiling brightly at me.

"You look so handsome today, Sora."

I felt startled. Aerith never called me by my first name. And why would she be calling me handsome with that sexual look in her eyes when she was wearing a pretty big rock on her ring finger? What the Hell?

I hesitated before dropping my board onto the ground and rolling out of the office. Students who were late to class and teachers walking through the halls just watched me go with a mixture of admiration and joy in their eyes and it was really fucking creepy. One female teacher even giggled and pulled down the front of her shirt a bit, as though she wanted to flash me. I looked away, feeling so utterly confused that it wasn't even funny.

When I got to Terra's class, the boys and girls both perked up when they saw me, but Kairi was just sitting in her desk texting on her cell phone. When I looked at her, I felt an almost inhuman urge to grab her and kiss her again—an urge that was stronger than the last time I had seen her, and it weirded me out even more than this day had. I shook it off (though it felt like I was wading through tar), and skated to my desk.

"Hey, Sora!" Terra said brightly. "Do you want to teach today? We're reading through Edgar Allen Poe's works."

I was just about to sit down in my seat and when he said this I narrowed my eyes at him.

"What?"

"Yeah, come on!" some of the students chimed. "That would be so cool!"

"Mr. Richardson should teach!"

"That'd be so awesome!"

A couple girls began to giggle and then I knew something weird was up. My eyes slid from Terra to Kairi, who was looking at me curiously from her seat.

Even though things were weird right then, I didn't want to turn down the opportunity to teach, so I shrugged and said sure. I had never gotten up in front of a classroom before, so it was a little awkward at first, but throughout the period I managed to find my own style. Of course, that style was me pulling two chairs up so I could sit on one and put my feet on the other as I made the kids take turns reading aloud.

I watched Kairi secretively while the students read aloud, and most of the time she was staring back at me. I thought it odd that she had no bruises, which I could see because she was again wearing shorts and a crop top—her usual attire. She looked unusually perky today, too. Her skin was glowing even though she wasn't wearing any make-up, from what I cold see, and her long hair flowed down her back like pure silk.

I had to shift uncomfortably in my chair a lot because I _really _wanted to kiss her. Like, _really _bad. And I didn't know why.

I wished I could remember what happened to me the night before. I had a sneaking feeling it had something to do with her, especially because of the way she was pushing her hair over one shoulder, biting the end of her pencil, and giving me flirty looks. Like she knew something that I didn't know.

After class, Terra told me I could teach for the rest of the day if I wanted to. While I was excited about that, Kairi had gotten up and was leaving, and something was telling me I needed to follow her and ask her what had happened to me last night.

I needed to get to the bottom of what was going on with me, and now.

_So put the crown around my head, so put the noose around my neck.__  
__Oh, they praise us to watch us die, forever young in your eyes._

~x~

Song: _"This is You Throwing in the Towel" by S.L.A.V.E.S_

Author's Note: -deleted-


	7. Accursed

**Warning: There is LIME and CITRUS in this chapter. Be forewarned.**

**~x~**

_All fired up, you're a hot mess getting messier_

_I'd do anything for sleep_

_But I can think of far better ways to waste your energy_

_If you can bear to still touch me_

_One by one, skin hardens_

_We're becoming the beast_

* * *

I ended up not following the little redheaded tart, believe it or not. Even though something was silently urging me to, the second I got out of the classroom and lost sight of her in the crowd full of students, the urge to talk to her dissipated. Or at least, it lessened. I was a little dismayed because I couldn't stop thinking about that damn kiss at the skate park.

Funny how I could go from thinking I was the smartest person in the entire universe, completely cocky and full of myself, to obsessing over one of my students. Not only was that fucked up, but it was illegal and completely unconstitutional.

Not that I voted or cared enough about the Constitution to think about that.

Whatever—I can tell when I've got a shovel dug into the dirt and I'm getting myself into a predicament.

Standing out there in the hallway, I looked around at the other students and wondered what it was about Kairi that was so much different from the other teenagers standing around me. Never mind the fact that everyone was ogling me like a trophy on display and even though the bell was ringing, nobody was moving.

'_Things are seriously getting weirder by the second . . .' _I thought, my uncomfortable gaze washing over flirtatiously giggling girls and grinning boys. Jesus Christ, it was like they wanted to _eat _me or something. A few surprise chills ran up and down my arms, and then I turned and went back into the classroom. I resolved to locate Kairi later that night at the bar.

As soon as the thought crossed my mind, however, I stopped in the middle of the front of the room. How strange. It almost felt like . . . I had entertained these thoughts before, if that made sense. Like a weird sort of déjà vu. But I knew it wasn't possible because yesterday, I hadn't gone to the bar. Yesterday, I had . . . Well, I couldn't remember what I had done yesterday. But I knew it wasn't that, and I knew Kairi and I still had unfinished business to deal with regarding the incident at the skate park.

Shrugging off the odd feelings, I turned to the new gaggle of students trickling in and prepared to conduct the class the same way I had done the last period—feet up and chillin' while they read out loud.

Bruh, I could get used to this.

~x~

After the work day was done, things got real shitty.

As if some sort of tonic had worn off, students and teachers alike began to go back to treating me as they normally did. Some of the girls still occasionally looked my direction, but for the most part, I had to go back to following the rules. A.k.a, keeping off my skateboard in the halls. That sucked ass.

I tested it out on Aerith and when she didn't do her little sexual voice to me like she had that morning, I knew whatever it was had faded and I was just regular-old Sora again. Not that I thought it was some sort of magic spell, but damn, son. I thought I'd hit the universe's luck lottery or something. Teaching all day had been fun. I knew that now things were feeling all normal again, they'd never give me the chance to again. At least, not for a while. That was a bummer because I had lots of other tricks up my sleeve for how I wanted to teach my students. It wasn't going to be me kicking back all day while a bunch of robots droned on and on about European Literature during the Renaissance. Nah. It was going to fun, hands-on, field trips, all sorts of cool shit.

Whatever it was that had been giving me the aura of a God today was gone, though, and I didn't know when I'd get the chance to try any of that.

As soon as I clocked out and left the doors of the building, I hopped on my board and ground down the railings. I flipped the board in a full circle in the air and then landed on it when I touched the sidewalk below. Nobody paid me any mind as I rolled all the way up to my car, which still sucked. I tell you, I thought I was _never _going to get over it. Call me narcissistic, but it had been fucking _ace _having everyone want to be my bitch. I don't care _what _the reason was.

My cell phone began to ring as I was stuffing my skateboard into the backseat. I answered it without looking.

"What?" I said, climbing into the driver's side.

". . . Wow, warm welcome, kid."

The blood froze in my veins and my fingers began to tremble. I hadn't heard this voice in years. Not since . . . Not since the accident. The accident that I had done everything in my power to block out. I was shocked to be hearing him call, but even more perturbed at whatever reasoning for calling that he had in the first place.

"What do you want?" I snapped. I couldn't be bothered faking nice with this bitch. He literally didn't get to ignore me and then just call out of the blue like nothing was wrong.

My father was silent for a long, tense moment. I thought I would start screaming and tear all of my spiky brown hair out if he didn't start talking, and fucking _fast_. I hated this. I hated feeling like a massive disappointment even when he was silent. All I had ever wanted was for him to be proud of me for _something_, but I guess now that would never be possible.

Why the Hell was he even calling?

"I just . . . I know things have been . . ." His terse voice trailed off. I could tell he was just as annoyed with this situation as I was.

"Hurry up and say it so we can go back to ignoring the shit out of each other," I spat out through clenched teeth. My cobalt blue eyes were trained on the glove compartment of my car, where I knew my reprieve lie inside. It was the only way I knew how to cope.

"The memorial's comin' up here pretty soon. Your mother and I are making the guest list," he breathed out as quickly as possible. "Should we put you down for a plus one?"

"No," I said in a monotone. I hadn't gone every year since it happened. Why the fuck would I suddenly show up to the memorial of someone who I'd had a hand in killing? My father made me so angry. I was clenching my fist so hard that my nails were breaking into the skin. I could see the blood welling up around my fingertips. I really wanted to take some pills.

My father sighed heavily and it sounded like he was about to say something but then he merely heaved another sigh.

"Okay," was all he said.

I hung up, tossed my phone aside, and scrambled to get the pill bottle out. I uncapped the lid and shook out five of the little fuckers. There was once a time where one was enough to help me fly, but now, things were different. You do this shit for years and your body builds up a pretty good tolerance.

I dry-swallowed the pills just as a voice—the voice from this morning—sounded out in my head again.

'_You shouldn't have done that, mate_.'

I blinked in confusion and looked over my shoulder, as if someone would be hiding in the backseat. It was deathly silent. So silent that if it weren't for a group of chattering, laughing girls walking by the car at the very same time, I would have thought that I had gone deaf. My mouth went dry from mixture of discomfort and the serious creep factor going on.

Were the pills making me lose my mind?

'_You're not going crazy,' _the voice echoed through my head again, not too quiet yet not too loud. '_Eh . . . Actually, maybe you are if you're popping pills like M&amp;M's.'_

"Okay, what. The _fuck_?" I said calmly to the empty car. I closed my eyes and passed my hands over my face as if weary or exasperated. Which I kinda was. Because there was a weird voice talking to me in my head and I couldn't tell if it was me talking to myself or if it was hallucinations from the pills.

What the Hell kinda pills _were _these?

I grabbed the pill bottle and looked at the prescription label on the side. It said it was my normal shit, so it couldn't have been a mistake on Cid's part. I slowly put them back into the glove compartment and waited for the voice to speak again, but there was nothing.

Feeling like a complete assmaster, I shakily whispered aloud, "H-Hello?"

'_Hi._'

The response was so quick and sudden that it almost felt like someone had hit me in the face. I flinched and tried again.

"Um . . . Who are you?"

A brief pause and then, '_Of course he forgot. That's how it's supposed to happen.'_

"Uhh . . . What are you going on about?" I said.

'_Right, you have no idea what's going on, and I made a huuuuuge mistake. I didn't know you were a . . . Shit. Okay, just . . . Crap.'_

I stared blankly out my windshield. I had to be going insane. There was just no fucking way this was really happening. Because if I wasn't mistaken, the voice in my head had an Irish accent. And the only person I knew with an Irish accent . . .

Was Kairi's.

"Mistake?" I asked, my voice slightly choked with terror. I wasn't normally the type to get scared, but I was literally talking to a chick in my head. A chick who wasn't anywhere near me. A chick who had found me randomly at the skate park and kissed me. A chick who obviously had some sort of witchiness about her to be able to be doing this.

Well, it was either that or I was literally going batshit.

'_You have no idea what you are, do you, mate?' _the pseudo-Kairi said in my head. '_Tsk, tsk. Someone must have blocked your mana from you.'_

"Mana?" I spluttered. "Like . . . Like in the _Tales _games? Or _Legend of Mana_? What?!"

'_Omg, no, idiot. You just . . . We can't talk about this like this. I'll find you.'_

And then, just like that, she was gone. I tried to call out to her a couple more times—I even tried saying Kairi's name in a questioning manner, but there was no response. I sat there in the parking lot for a good fifteen minutes after that, trying to make sense of everything in my head and came to no conclusions and ended up with a shit ton of questions.

Now, more than ever, I had a feeling that my forgetting last night had nothing to do with pills and _everything _to do with Kairi.

~x~

After meeting up with Riku for a quick drink (basically he sat there and prattled on and on about the chick he banged that weekend and then we left), I went home and prepared to do some more drinking. I was hoping that if I got drunk enough, I could forget that my father had called me and forget all about my weird-ass mindfreak convo with Kairi.

I dropped my keys on the floor and stumbled into the apartment without bothering to turn on the lights or shut the door. I could tell my vision was swimming even though it was dark, and the pounding ache in my head reminded me to _remind _myself not to take pills before drinking. I wandered into my kitchen and opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of Vodka, and then swayed my way back into the living room.

"You shouldn't leave your front door open like this. Someone could just come waltzing in and hurt you."

I screamed and almost dropped the bottle of liquor in my hands. Stumbling backward, I fell against the wall in my living room and my head snapped into the direction of my front door. My eyes went wide as I saw two or three Kairis standing there, dancing around each other. I shook my head a couple of times to clear it.

"Wow, what the fuck," I laughed to myself before taking another swig of alcohol. "I must be _helllllaaaaa _drunk. Shiiit."

"Nope. Well . . . Actually, yeah. You're pretty drunk. But I'm actually here." Kairi leaned her shoulder up against the door jamb and put one hand on her outward facing hip. She was wearing the most conservative thing I'd ever seen her in—a black pleated miniskirt and a light pink oversized sweater. Her feet were clad in all-black Vans and her hair was pulled back into a low side ponytail.

Before I could stop myself, the alcohol spoke for me, "You look fucking cute, dude."

Kairi rolled her cerulean eyes. "Now _that _is the 'drunk' talking."

I frowned. "What are . . . What are you _doing _here?" I slurred.

Kairi merely smiled. "You gonna invite me in, or what?"

I stumbled over and placed my hand on the open door, leaning nonchalantly over her. I gave her a half-smile, a quick quirk of the lips and tilt of the head, and my hair fell into my eyes. "I dunno. It's technically illegal for me to have students at my house," I purred out. "But I'm all for breaking the laws when it suits me~"

Ohhhh, I was _so _going to regret this when I was sober.

Kairi shifted so that her chest was pressed up against mine, one of her knees popped forward as her ankle raised up slightly. She trailed one French manicured fingernail down the front of my shirt and her smile intensified. As I gazed into her eyes, I began to feel like I was falling. Falling deep, deep down into a blazing hole of fire of which there was no end to. I leaned closer, fearing that if I didn't kiss her right at that moment that I would simply die.

"And what if the laws don't apply to people like me?" Kairi breathed out, standing on her tiptoes and snaking her hands around my neck.

I felt the hairs on my body standing up as a shiver rolled down my back. I wanted to touch her, but I kept my only free hand against the door as the other was occupied with holding the bottle. I felt the alcohol itching its way through my system, pressing me onward, telling me to drag her into the house and have my way with her.

Kairi's lips ghosted up the side of my neck and I groaned. Each place her lips touched felt like a tiny fire had sprung up in its place, a trail of flame leading up to my lips. I closed my eyes and waited for a kiss that didn't come. I felt her peppermint breath mingle sweetly with mine.

"Invite. Me. _In_," Kairi murmured.

"Why?" I challenged, my lips curving up into a devilish smile. My eyelids dragged upward and open so that I could look into her sparkling sapphire orbs. "I can't be held responsible for what happens when I do, you know."

One of her hands slid down and began to tug innocently at one of the belt loops on my skinny jeans.

What was even happening?

"I can't be held responsible, either," she whispered.

I stared at her for a moment and then my sanity snapped. I told her to come the fuck in before I smashed my lips against hers in heated bliss, twining our tongues together in a dance from which there was no coming back from. The liquor bottle crashed to the floor and Kairi kicked the door shut with her foot. We stumbled backward, my hands dragging heavily down her sides and around to cup her buttocks. I lifted her up and she immediately wrapped her legs around my waist, pressing her body as close to me as she dared. I feel back over the arm of the couch, my back hitting the cushions with slight force as the full weight of her body settled upon me.

"M-Mr. Richardson, we . . . We can't . . ." she gasped as I lifted my lips to her neck and kissed her fervently. I grabbed her hips and ground them downward, against my pelvis and we both groaned in the back of our throats.

"I thought you said the laws didn't apply to you . . . ?" I whispered against her ear, my hand sliding under her skirt to touch her at the warm apex of her thighs. She arched her back, her breasts pressing against my pectorals.

"_Uhhn . . . _Seriously, m-mate. We . . . We have to s-stop . . ." she pleaded, though her body was reacting much differently than her words. I was stroking her outside of her panties, her hips rolling against my hand in time with my movements. Every breath ended in a tiny whimper or moan, the delectable sounds slicing through the foggy haze of drunkenness that was smothering my mind.

"Gah, _fuck_, you're so hot," I stated incredulously as I watched her bite her bottom lip, her face telling me everything I needed to know. I was so aroused at that point, so lost in the mist and darkness, that I thought I would burst right then and there. I started to push aside her panties, to feel her moist flesh, but never quite got to that point. With lightning speed, her hand latched around mine and halted my movements. My hand was trapped in place, in such a way that my knuckles were brushing the outer folds of her womanhood. She shivered once and then opened her eyes to gaze down at me with an almost tender concern.

"We _have _to _stop_," she panted, her hips rocking ever-so-slowly, as if she couldn't resist. She was so wet already that she was almost dripping. I knew why she wanted me to stop, but dude, I was so fucking drunk and turned on that I just wanted to roll her over and have my way with her until the sun came up.

"But _why_?" I practically whine, my free hand coming up to grip her hip tightly. I fought the urge to do anything else, even though I desperately wanted _so _much more.

"Because if we do this, there's no going back," she answered me, her eyes looking off to the side sadly. She stopped moving her hips.

Curiously, I cocked my head to one side. I may have been inebriated, but I could tell she was upset about something. I rolled forward so that she was straddling my hips and I was sitting up. I clasped my hands behind her back and searched for her lips with mine. Our noses brushed gently.

"What's wrong?" I whispered worriedly, my voice slurring slightly. "Come on, tell me . . ."

She sat back a little bit, hands resting lightly on my shoulders, and then she smiled sadly. "I . . . I made you forget, didn't I? I forgot about that."

My brow furrowed, my mind perplexed. My brain hurt from trying to discern what she meant. "Forget? Huh?"

Kairi threw her head backward in a sigh, all of her long hair falling down her back. "Uggggh, how do I explain this without you freaking out?"

For some reason, my eyelids were starting to feel extremely heavy. I knew I was about to pass out from being so drunk, but there was nothing I could do to stop it. I tried to keep my eyes open, but they just kept sliding shut.

Kairi noticed this and started to laugh. "Falling asleep, mate? I know what to do."

"Hm?" I smiled dreamily. I was already half-asleep. At this point, she looked like an angel . . .

Kairi's eyes slowly traveled down to my throat, which was bared as my sleepy head rolled backward. She licked her lips and for a moment, I thought I saw her canine teeth poking out over her bottom lip. Those were some hella long teeth, dude . . .

"I'm so . . . Hungry . . ." she groaned. I felt her lips smoothing over my pulse point, and then something scraped me lightly. I felt a shock of pleasure run across my sensitive skin and I wrapped my arms fully around her, sleepily moaning to myself. She whined lightly and sat back again, her fingernails digging into my shoulders.

I didn't have a fucking clue what she was talking about. All I knew was that I wanted to feel her mouth against my flesh again.

"Mmm . . ." I chuckled, smiling innocently with one eye peeked open at her. "Then eat?"

"Bloody Hell," she laughed in spite of herself, running her fingers through her thick, crimson locks. "If only you knew what you were talking about, you wouldn't be so eager."

"Your accent . . ." I mumbled, nearly asleep by now. I was about to fall forward with my head on her shoulder. "So sexy . . ."

"You upset me," she whispered, grabbing my chin and forcing me to tilt my head upward. A small smile alighted her lips. "But alas, you're one of them, and so I can't drink your blood."

My mind was so fuzzy that I could barely be confused. I just laughed. She was probably joking.

"Why not?" I asked sarcastically, my eyes shut tightly. "Mine's the best in town, haha. Tastes like . . . Fucking strawberries. And rainbows and shit."

"Let's just say . . . There's a very bad man out there who's been searching for me for a very long time," she explained, her voice a lustful whisper against the shell of my ear. I felt her hands trailing down the front of my shirt. "And if I drink your blood, he'll find me."

"So then why won't you let me fuck youuuu?" I groaned, burying my head in her bosom. "Well, besides the fact that I'll lose my job and probably never be able to teach in the state of California as long as I live."

She laughed, a merry guffaw, and then she held my chin in her hands again. I dragged my eyes open and we locked gazes, her luscious lips a mere hairs-breadth away from mine. I felt her hair tickling my face, a curtain around me, shielding my peripherals. Her fingers slowly unbuttoned my jeans.

"Because, Mr. Rich-ard-son," she said slowly, enunciating each syllable of my name all while undoing the button and unzipping the zipper. "If you fuck me . . . You'll die."

My heart skipped a beat. I didn't know what the fuck she was talking about or if it was even real, but whatever she was saying, it was _hot_. And even though in the back of my mind what was left of sober me told me to stop this before it went any further for the sake of my career, the moment her hand slipped beneath the waistband of my boxers, I nearly blacked out.

"But I suppose for now, I'll just have to drink your aura like last time," she giggled. "It'll keep me strong for a few days. And I guess I'll be nice and give you your memories back."

My world was spinning. My world was spinning and I was rocketing upward into space, soaring past galaxies and pulsars and deep into nebulae. Because at the same moment that she wrapped her slender fingers around the girth of my member, she pressed forward and engaged me in a ferociously passionate liplock to rival any other that I had ever had. A kiss so heated that it woke me up before I could pass out and made the alcohol that sizzled through my body feel like ice.. The entire time we kissed, all I could do was lay there, hold her head in my hands, and kiss her back while she pleasured me with the most skilled hands I'd ever encountered. She brought me up to the edge of an extravagant cliff so quickly that I lost my breath, gasping her name into her mouth.

"F-Fuck, I'm . . . K-Kairi, I'm about to . . ." I panted out, my lips having separated from hers so I could take a breath. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of that cliff, standing on tiptoe as the wind rocked me back and forth. I pushed my hips up into her hand, yearning to find that release. And all the while, the foggy haze around my mind continued to intensify in a way that felt much different than being drunk usually felt. I was growing weaker and weaker in a way that was not physical, but mental. Almost . . . spiritual. I didn't feel like I was going to die, but I felt like I was going to fall into a deep sleep from which there was no waking up from.

"Go ahead~" Kairi laughed breathily, picking up the pace with her hands. "It's the least I can do, Mr. Richardson."

Something about the way she said my name—like an innocent student in class—made the taught rubber band within my body snap and I fell over the edge of the cliff. Electricity rocketed up and down throughout my body as I came into her hand, burying my face into the crook between her neck and shoulder to stifle my long, drawn out moan. My hips rocked against her hand a few last times, hard, and then I was quite literally spent.

Just before I drifted off into a deep, listless slumber, I heard her speak one final time.

"When you wake up, you'll remember everything about last night and tonight. You'll know what I am, and you'll have the ability to destroy me . . . Or save me. I'll see you at school."

And then I was out.

~x~

You ever get the feeling that someone's watching you? Like, you're sleeping in your room late at night or you're wandering through the grocery store and even though you _know _you're alone, it still feels like the creepy old guy Herbert from _Family Guy _is legitimately watching you? It's like, literally the worst feeling in the world. You start sweating that cold kinda sweat and your stomach twists up and then when you look around and see that nothing is there, you still can't shake the feeling that there are eyes on you?

When I woke up in the middle of the night, wondering if everything that had happened with Kairi and I was a twisted, sick dream, I felt two pairs of eyes watching me in the darkness.

Actually, fuck that. I _saw _two pairs of eyes watching me. And then I heard the voices. Hissing, evil voices that left me no time to process the memories that Kairi had allowed to flow back into me. I knew that whatever was in my room was not human and it wasn't friendly. I couldn't even move—I was quite literally frozen with fear.

"_Sssssssshe wassss here . . . I can sssssssmell her on himmmmm . . ." _one voice hissed, and I saw yellow eyes flashing in the shadows near the living room window.

"_Yesss . . . Masssssster will be mosssssst pleasssssed to know we have found herrrrr . . ." _the second voice hissed in response. I saw its eyes rolling up into its head.

"_Sssssssshe fed off of his aura, but she couldn't contain itttt . . . I can tasssssssste it in the airrrrr . . ."_

I squeezed my eyes shut and pretended to be asleep, hoping that these creatures weren't here for me. In my mind's eye, the memories that had been restored showed me a brief flash of the night at Monaco Bar when Kairi had showed me her fangs. Were these creatures like her? They didn't seem like it, especially not since they had a strange way of speech and weird bright, yellow eyes.

"_She issss sssssso powerful, but not powerful enough to contain an auraaaa?"_ the second voice purred out, chuckling a dry, raspy chuckle that made me think of twigs and dead grass.

"_You can't ssssensssse it? He issss one of the Accursssssed. Not even our Massssster could contain it."_

The other voice was quiet and then I saw the eyes coming closer. My heart began to pound wildly in my chest and it was becoming harder and harder to keep myself still. I was already trying to calculate how long it would take me to get to my front door and escape, but somehow, I knew I wouldn't make it very far.

"_He issssss one of the Accursssssed? Then all sssssshe need do isssss drink hissssss blood. Then Massssssster will know exxxxxxactly where sssssshe isssss."_

"_Corrrrecttttt._"

There was a long silence and I saw the eyes disappear. For a moment, I was sure they had disappeared and I breathed a sigh of relief. Then, just as suddenly as the fear had gone, it returned when the two pairs of eyeballs reappeared . . . Standing right beside the couch, looking down on me. My eyes almost immediately adjusted to the darkness and from the faint moonlight trickling in past the blinds, I saw them.

They were long and lanky, all leathery, grey skin with cracks and scars. That hideous skin stretched tautly over every bone, their ribs protruding like the rocky crags of an ominous mountain range. Their heads were round and bald save for a few random strings of yarnlike black hair. Behind them, I saw that wings akin to that of a bat's were folded loosely against their backs and sides. As my eyes traveled up, I saw that they were baring mouths full of razor-sharp teeth at me—teeth so long that they couldn't possibly shut their mouths if they tried. Saliva dripped steadily down, hitting my arm and sizzling lightly as it did so. It burned, but I refused to wipe it off. I didn't want to move lest they attack without warning.

The normal, sarcastic personality I normally had was gone at this point, having been replaced by the intelligent, literature-loving me I was inside. I was so scared that I wasn't even thinking in terms of sarcasm and expletives. I just wanted to survive this night.

"_I wisssssssh we could feassssst upon his flesssssssh,_" one of them said, and I realized that even though I heard his voice clear as day, his mouth wasn't moving. I saw a long, pointy tongue snake out to lick its sharp teeth and I nearly lost my shit.

I was _petrified_.

I screamed when the other one's clawed hand shot out and wrapped around my throat so tightly that I felt the claws digging into the back of my neck. He lifted me clear up into the air as easy as though I weighed the same as a feather and peered at me as an eagle does its prey. He closed his golden eyes and I saw the two slits that made up his nostrils flare as he inhaled audibly. When his eyes opened again, they were narrowed.

"_Sssssshe has Markeddddd him,_" he snarled angrily, his hand closing even tighter around my precious neck so that I could hardly breathe. "_That little sssssslut has Markeddddd him."_

The other one looked enraged as well. "_How much of his aura has she fed upon?"_

"_All of itttt! Sssssshe tapped into hissssss mana and Markeddddd him sssssso that hissssss aura would replenisssssh only for herrrrr. If we drink hisssss aura, we will be poissssonedddd! Curssssse her!"_

The two evil beings screeched and I was flung away from them like a ragdoll, crashing against the table in my adjoining dining room. I went rolling over the edge of it, my back screaming in protest as I had hit it against the edge of the mahogany wood. I groaned in pain, clutching my back as I rolled onto my stomach. I frantically tried to crawl away, but one of the creatures opened his wings and soared over to the table. He grabbed it and chucked it against the far wall, the wood splintering into twenty or so large pieces. Before I could manage to fend him off, he swept his long, sharp claws along my chest, laying the fabric of my shirt and the skin on my torso open. The cuts weren't too deep, but I felt blood spilling down my chest in rivulets. The pain was ferocious and the gashes burned like wildfire.

I cried out when the creature dug its fingernails into my shoulders and shoved me high up against the wall, the tips of my toes grazing the carpeted floor. I could feel his claws gouging deeper into my flesh. It hurt so badly that I nearly lost consciousness right there. His golden eyes fixated upon mine and I could feel my pain threshold wearing thin.

"_Don't do itttt!" _the other creature hissed, winging himself into the dining room. "_You'll die if you do itttt!"_

"_A neccccccessssssssary sssssacrificcccce for the Massssssster." _I couldn't stop staring at those teeth . . . Those horrible, horrible teeth. They were the stuff of _nightmares_.

Suddenly, there was a loud shattering sound and out of the living room window came a blur of black shadows. I heard the monsters screech, saw a flash of silver, and then both of their heads went rolling. The dead creature's claws slid out of me painfully slow and I crumpled to the ground. A tall, cloaked person was standing on the wreckage of my former dining room table, wiping the edges of the blade he had used to kill the monsters on edge of his black leather pants.

"A necessary sacrifice indeed," he said, his voice low and smooth.

His boots were heavy on the floor as he came closer to me and knelt before me. My entire body shook from the strength it was taking me to stay sitting upright against the wall. My blood was leaving my body in a rush, quicker than I could handle. Then, the stranger pushed his hood back, revealing quite the surprise.

He looked just like me, but with hair as black as ink and eyes the color of amber sunsets.

"I'm Vanitas," he said in that same deep voice. "And I think you need my help."

"N-No shit, Sher-Sherlock," I choked out in the way only I could, coughing a bit of blood out onto my chin.

Vanitas chuckled. "Just like a Le Fay. It's all in the family, I suppose."

My breathing wheezed and rattled past my dry, cracked lips. I was in _so _much God damn pain and I was sure I was going to die there. "Le Fay? I'm a Richardson, asswipe."

"Calling the guy who's about to save your life an 'asswipe'?" Vanitas paused, looking thoughtfully upward. Then, he nodded. "Yep, you're definitely a Le Fay. All of the Accursed originated from the same bitchy witch. Now, brace yourself, cousin. This is gonna hurt like a bitch."

Before I registered what was going on and any of what he had just said, he had taken a small pouch out from within the folds of his cloak. He opened it, pushed one finger inside, and then touched that same finger against my forehead. He began to speak a string of unknown words in a strange language, his voice echoing loudly in my head and I screamed as I felt the fibers of my body beginning to knit themselves back together. Soon, the pain began to overwhelm me, ripping through my shoulders and chest like pure electricity. I looked up at Vanitas, imploring him silently to stop, but he just kept speaking that language, his lips moving rapidly as he formed each syllable and sound. All I could see was those amber eyes, and then . . . Nothing.

I was out.

_One by one, we're becoming the beast_

_Sheer power in the heat of hate brings our army to its knees_

_Steel lungs are shouting the house down_

_Going for the kill from the kiss_

_Battle stations are now navigation_

_Have we driven love to this?_

~x~

**Song: "**_**The Beast" by Imogen Heap**_

**Author's Note: Sooooo sorry that it took so long. Thank you to everyone for your reviews and support! I'm so glad I decided to continue this story, and I hope you guys are, too! I have a lot of neat stuff planned for it, so stick with me and I promise to deliver!**

**Also, to AnHeiressofaSoldier, I still love you! Don't worry! Everyone go check out her one-shots and full-length fics! She has a very diverse collection of genres that she writes, and she writes them all very well.**

**Please go check out my best friend SoraxKairi7's new fic, **_**Pit Stop**_**! It's shaping up to be insanity at its finest, so pull up your big kid pants and get over there!**

**Until next time~**


	8. Author's Note

**May 18, 2016: Hey guys, don't worry! I haven't forgotten about my stories. I just don't have a computer. Plus, I started my own business making phone cases, so I have been extremely busy because my sales volume has increased to about 20 sales per week, and that's a lot of work T.T but you can see my decoden cases at www . creepycutecases . com**

**I'm starting school finally in the Summer (at the age of 24 omfg), and then I'll be back to writing! I'll even be updating all of my fics at once!**


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